


Nothing like the Sun

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: A little gore, Anal Sex, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Blow Jobs, Coercive Sex, Dual Genitalia, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Frottage, Infidelity, Intercrural Sex, Love Triangles, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Multi, Polyamory, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, old man sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-08-01 22:56:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16293440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: When the dust has settled, when Ego's ashes have dispersed, Stakar does what he should've done a long time ago, and buys Yondu Udonta a drink.





	1. coral is far more red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomnickname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomnickname/gifts).



> **I'm posting this fic as a big ol' thank you to Randomnickname, who's been keeping me cheerful with some amazing comments. Love you, bud. There'll be more on this fic soon, as well as my fun train-robbery-slash-murder fic, _Stand and Deliver!_**

Six months. That's how long it takes (after everything, after Ego) for Stakar to ask Yondu out for a drink.

Suffice to say, it goes badly.

 

 

They sit. Opposite sides of the table, like they're at a business meeting. Their knees clonk beneath; Stakar mumbles an apology that Yondu pretends he can’t hear. They put in their orders and wait.

So much has changed, so much is different. It’s like that saying, the one the ice truckers mutter to each other as they reel in their comets and try to convince themselves that it’s better to live in the black, no roots to their name, no world to call their own.

_You can’t land on the same planet twice._

Similarly, you can never love the same person. Every atom in their body has altered, every cell has died and regrown. The man in front of Stakar is unrecognizable. But then again, he thinks, examining his distorted reflection in the silverware, if his younger self saw him now, would he know his own face?

 

 

Age hangs cruelly on them all.

 

 

The drinks're delivered – because Stakar wants this to be _special,_ so he's taken them somewhere they get served, rather than having to battle through the herds around the watering-hole. Yondu grabs his tankard like he's been marooned on a desert world. He swigs in noisy gulps.

Means they don't have to talk. Stakar hates that he's grateful.

 

 

He leans back on his chair and watches him. Old friend. Old damn-near everything, once.

_You broke all our hearts, boy. But some you broke more than others._

Yondu doesn't look like much of a heartbreaker. His jagged teeth clink on the rim of the mug and beer – something A’askavarian; dark-bitter and potent – zigzags between the bristles on his chin.

 

 

He looks tired, older than he is. Stakar did that to him, he thinks.

 

 

Yondu's first to break the silence. “The hell you lookin' at,” he grunts, wiping froth off his top lip. “I ain't no angel anymore.”

He's wrong. Stakar can't explain it, but he's wrong. “Neither am I.”

Yondu's lip hikes up. A silver tooth flashes amid the rot. “Guess we's just about right for each other then.”

 

 

Stakar searches his mouth for moisture. Finds none. His own beer seems wholly unappetizing; it reeks of stale hops and staler dreams.

"How's the kid?" he tries. It's a pathetic subject change, but Yondu must be in a merciful mood, because he takes him up on it without pointing it out.

"Pissy, mostly. Honeymoon period's worn off. Think he's rememberin’ why he wanted his own damn crew in the first place. Ain’t a day goes by when he ain’t nippin’ at me, lookin’ to forge his own way.”

Stakar can't help but smile. "I remember what that’s like."

Yondu drains his drink. "No, you don't."

"Excuse me?"

"I said you don't." Yondu licks foam from the tankard’s rim. He won’t meet Stakar's eyes. "I weren't yer kid, you weren't my pa. You never gave up yer food so's I could eat. You never had to. So, nah. Don't think you do know what it’s like, boss-man.”

 

 

Stakar is a Ravager Admiral. He faces a difficult conversation every third day of the week. This is the only one he can't bring himself to face.

“This was a bad idea,” he says. He pushes out his chair, busying himself counting unit chits from his pockets. “Drinks're on me. You wanna stay, build up a tab, you put it in my name. They know the account; I'll clear it.”

 

 

Yondu doesn't say shit. Just nods, jaw an ugly knot. He studies the grain on the table until Stakar walks away.

 

 

Stakar tore a Yondu-shaped hole in his life when he was twenty-going-on-thirty-five, Yondu a decade his junior. They've both changed shape since then. Waistlines cut a little thicker. Bellies overlap belts, even before a meal. Their shoulders slump and their stubble glints gray and there are lines, so many lines on their faces; their mugshots like satellites pitted with craters and faults, waiting for the blow that cracks them apart.

Neither of them will fit the holes they left. Thirty years apart is far too long, and six months together not nearly enough.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“Idiot.”

Stakar yawns, smacks his lips, rolls to face his comm. “Good morning, Aleta,” he says.

“ _Flarkin’_ idiot.”

Stakar wishes he had any evidence to correct her.

 

 

Aleta leans towards the camera till her face warps. It’s like something from a nightmare: eyes bulging, her pointy nose swelling to five times its size. “You were supposed to be making up with him,” she spits. “Now look what you've done! Flarkin' brain like moomba shit, you slug-bellied _Jothraxi._ ”

There's nothing to say. She's right – as usual – and also as usual, Stakar's managed to do Yondu wrong. By enabling his endeavors to poison his liver, if nothing else.

 

 

Stakar drags the holographic tab bill to hover besides Aleta's scowl. He might as well face all his demons simultaneously.

“He ordered the most expensive cocktail on the menu,” he says.

"Kid deserves that, and more."

“He ordered it for _everyone in the restaurant._ ”

 

 

Aleta whistles, impressed. Even after all these years, that sound still stabs Stakar somewhere tender. Not the heart – not anymore. More like the back. Sore and sharp as kidney stones.

“Aren't you supposed to be comforting me?” he asks.

“When've I ever done that?” Aleta settles back, away from the camera, lounging on the swivel-chair in her M-ship cockpit. The steady blink of lights – full fuel pod, thrusters stable, speed constant, no nearby gravitational wells – flares and recedes against the scimitar-sharp bones in her cheeks.

 

 

Beautiful. Course she is. They all were, once – dashing and dastardly and everything else the tabloids loved. But while the others sag and gray, Aleta still stuns Stakar, still gives him that perfect, heady edge of danger, like his jugular jumps under one of her blades.

He thinks he loved her, once. From the way she watches him, Aleta knows it.

 

 

“Do you want him back?” Her voice is never soft. Even when she tries to whisper, it catches in her throat, husky as the rasp of frost-glazed thrusters after a long Contraxian night. “Well? Do you?”

Stakar thinks of everything Yondu did. Of those kids – bright-eyed, trusting, _innocent_ fucking kids; decomposing in the belly of an evil god.

He remembers the way the world freeze-framed when he intercepted the rodent’s call. _H_ _e's alive, but he needs your help if you want him to stay that way. If you ever loved him, come now, old man. This is the last chance you’ll get._ How time solidified, thickening around him like setting wax.

 

 

Stakar doesn't answer. He studies his wrinkled hands, and he wishes he knew.

 


	2. if snow be white

Stakar visits the aviary at first-light. It’s where he always goes when he needs time to think, to brood.

 

 

 _To sulk,_ Aleta would’ve added. She hung up on him the night before with a wink that promises trouble. Stakar suspects she’ll show to the Captains’ Conference that evening, swigging something sharp as viper-venom and smirking at him with smoke-painted, filthy black eyes. She'll tempt him, of course she will, but with age comes a certain amount of wisdom. Stakar knows that if he takes her up on her offer, he’ll wind up in cuffs, his pride aching as much as his cock.

There’s a reason they don’t work together, no matter how much love's involved. Can’t have two pilots flying the same M-ship.

 

 

The aviary is breezy and bright, in contrast with Stakar's foul mood. It’s a vast space, lush with high-oxy-output plants. Of course, there’s an oxygenerator for every wing of the moon-sized galleon, but generators malfunction and power can fail, and sometimes, the best back-up is the one that nature intended.

This dome used to be an observation deck, although it’s long-since been subsumed under the _Starhawk’s_ ever-growing coat of new artillery rooms, decontamination showers and crew dorms, more M-ship docks and aerospace maintenance hangars and – _oh dear, we’ve expanded beyond the radius of our gravitation simulator; let’s just stick another one on the side_. Solars curve overhead, red and yellow, expertly blended to mimic the Arcturian dawn.

 

 

On Arcturus, the hawks are everywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes – the ones in the aviary are no larger than the finches on Xandar, although they all have talons and forwards-facing, sulfur-yellow eyes.

Those latch onto Stakar as soon as he’s through the gate. The trio divebomb him, peeling away at the last moment.

 

 

 _Food,_ they demand in harsh caws. _Food._

“Brats,” Stakar says fondly. He doesn’t duck, even when tiny claws prick at the thinning patch on the back of his crown. “You’d think I starved you.”

 

 

Years ago, he had a series of holograms designed so that the walls of the aviary resembled a forest. After the second hawk broke its neck, swooping into solid steel, Stakar wiped the lot of them blank. Nowadays, the cage looks like what it is, but at least no crumpled feathered bodies await him.

 

 

He takes the Orloni cubs out the bucket, one by one, lifting them by their baggy scruffs. Their teeth champ and their eyes roll, wide-set on their ugly heads. They scatter as soon as he releases them, scampering into the holographic grass.

The last leaves a scratch on his thumb. Considering what happens next, Stakar supposes he deserves it. Like he deserved that extortionate bill, according to Aleta.

Stakar sighs. He sucks on the cut, bucket resting on his boots. He watches the miniature hawks swirl away from him, flying lazy loops over their prey. They fold their wings and plummet, one after the next. Shrill squeals indicate their success.

 

 

Arcturian hawks can’t be domesticated. They’re wild things, free things, too proud to be tamed. But Stakar won these three fledglings in a bet. They’ve lived their entire life in captivity. Best they stay here with him, live out their days where they’re safe and cherished.

Stakar sits, upending the bucket beside him. He waits for them to finish their feast and take to the air once more.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Next time he sees Yondu, he has to summon him. It feels disturbingly like calling a misbehaving dog, shaking the food tin so they'll pad out from their kennel, eyeing you sideways and cringing in expectance of a kick.

Yondu skulks into the great hall, head low between his shoulders. He scans the vast loop of captains at the table, only five of whom want him there (though of these, one is still making up his mind). It takes Yondu a moment to gather himself, but then he steps out, striding forth to greet his admiral, leather coat slapping at his calves.

 

 

Stakar can smell him coming. He knows from the raised brows following Yondu around the table that he's not the only one.

 

 

Yondu has either been the subject of so many dark looks that he no longer notices them, or he's only got eyes for his admiral. “M's'ree,” is the first thing he says. Clipped, abrupt. No eye-contact. “Bout the bar thing. That were some tab I left ya.”

“I'm sorry, you're _what_?”

Yondu glares at the table. “What you just said.”

Stakar blinks. "Oh.”

“Quill said I had to get better at sayin' it, is all. Figured you was a good place to start.”

 

 

Something's wrong.

Stakar can't explain what, or even how he knows it - but he can tell. Before he can ask, Yondu's off again, aiming for the empty seat at Charlie's side. It's lain barren, draped in cobwebs and freckled with dead spiders ever since the trial. Of course, they slapped a bit of polish on it over the last six months and banished all the eight-legged lodgers, but when Yondu sinks into it he might as well be a materializing ghost.

Martinex leans around Charlie – so, quite some distance – to squeeze Yondu's forearm. Charlie grins at him, and Krugarr waggles his fingers on Stakar's opposite side. Even Mainframe tootles merrily, welcoming him back to where he belongs. Home - or as close to it as their kind know.

 

 

Yondu grins back. It's hollow, somehow, like he's not really seeing them. Stakar tells himself it's his imagination.

 

 

They have to wait on Aleta. She always makes a point of being last to arrive. Stakar suspects she has some sort of surveillance in operation so that she can time her entrance, although he has yet to prove it. In the meantime, the other captains make their disapproval of Yondu as clear as they can without actively hurling incendiaries. There are leers, sneers, baleful glares.

Yondu arranges himself more comfortably on the chair. He treats them to one of his more obnoxious smiles.

 _I'm back,_ it crows. _Ain't nothin' y'all can do about it._

 

 

Stakar observes. This is a precarious moment for them all. Anything could happen, anything could go wrong. Everything needs to be handled with _diplomacy._

Eventually, realizing the mutters won't fade of their own accord, he raps the table for silence.

“Captain Aleta will join us when she sees fit.” He looks around the table, meeting the eyes, ocular implants and photosensitive bulbs of every man, woman, layer, carrier, zugdorf, interrya and non-conformist in attendance. “I'll save her report for last. For now – let's begin with Martinex.”

They move around the ring. Nothing too exciting. A lost ship here, a firework there. A crew given the Colors after a rookie fed an M-ship the wrong fuel blend. New contacts, a promising gig in the Gravarian system involving a tip-off about a Kree fanatic-in-exile: an Accuser from the days of Hala’s old rule, seeking sanctuary from the bounty hunters on his tail.

 

 

Stakar jots calculations on his datadex with the tip of his finger, letting the algorithm handle the math. They're breaking even. Not bad, for a slow month.

It's feast or famine in their line of business. Some cycles you bust five bullion galleons and settle yourself comfortably for the upcoming astral year; other times you blow it all by piloting your fleet into a quantum asteroid field. Space is a huge fucking habitat with a near-infinite number of variables. It's impossible to control every factor.

Even Stakar’s given up on trying – and anyone who knows him could tell you that that's a rare day indeed.

 

 

But there are some things he does have power over. Including the frost that crackles at the edge of the atmosphere, thick and brittle, when it's Yondu's turn to speak.

Yondu doesn't let it deter him. His bravado seems to be an act that he dons and doffs at random; he delivers his report – _galleon fully functional, all crew present an' correct, still workin' on repairs_ – in a dull monotone.

 

 

Mutters burble at the far corners of the room. _Call that a galleon? Barely a shuttle._

_Crew's under ten. Ain't enough for a seat at our table._

_Heard his last crew mutinied. Ain't there Code about that? Don't it say them who've been mutinied on can't be cap'n again?_

A sly scoff. _Ain't puttin' much stock by Code anymore though, are we? Not where Udonta's concerned._

 

 

If Stakar can hear those words then Yondu definitely can. His ears were always finer-tuned than most.

 

 

Blue fists curl where they rest against the table. Stakar recognizes the bunch in his shoulders, the shift of old muscle under leather and flesh.

If Yondu doesn't remember the rules... If Yondu gives into the temptation to put his arrow through each of the speakers' throats...

 

 

Nothing Stakar can do will protect him then.

 

 

He raises a hand. The whispering stops.

 

 

“The retrial is over,” he says, menacingly soft. “The decision has been made. The Seven cast their votes, and the verdict is unanimous – Udonta is in. Anyone who disagrees with that disagrees with me, with the Code and the flame.”

This must be said. He knows how ruthless the undercaptains are, what they’ll do to get their way. Hell, it’s why he employed them. If Stakar gives them any leeway, they'll ambush Yondu in a back alley at his favorite whore-haunt and stick him before he can whistle. They'll act like they were doing Stakar and the rest a favor.

Stakar can’t let that happen.

 

 

“Does anyone have anything to add?” He introduces a wisp of charge to his solar wings.

Silence. Not even a grumble. Until Aleta swaggers through the door, a blaster strapped to each thigh and chunks caught in her long black hair that look suspiciously like bits of small intestine.

 

 

She dismisses her retinue. Three shabby, sharp-toothed women slink back into the corridor, sending a lazy chest-thump Stakar's way. Their forest-green leathers meld with the shadows, as if they’re extensions of the dark.

Stakar's crew know better than to bother them. If any don’t, they deserve everything they get.

Aleta herself stalks to the table, all sharp lines and a sharper smirk. The afterparty is BYOB. Aleta’s is tall and unlabelled, and Stakar can smell it through the cork.

 

 

“Mornin’,” she drawls.

“Afternoon,” corrects Stakar. The crews are used to their little snipes; it wouldn’t be a proper meet without them. What they aren’t used to – or haven’t been, in a very long time – is Yondu joining in.

“Wassup, you old hag? You go senile, get lost along the way?”

 

 

Oh hell. Stakar resists the urge to drop his face into his hands.

 

 

There are gasps. Expressions of outrage. Stakar swears he hears an ‘Oh, my stars’ from the far side of the table. Never before has an amassed horde of pirate captains sounded so much like pensioners at a Xandarian bingo hall.

Aleta laughs, though it isn't quite loud enough to drown out the rest.

“Brat,” she says, thwacking him upside the head. Yondu looks more delighted by that blow than any of Stakar’s attempts at reconciliation.

 

 

Stakar grinds his teeth. He can't stop resentment. That spreads like damp on a wall, creeping under pipes and wainscoting until the foundation rots out from within. If Yondu truly wants to return to the table, he needs to keep his head low, stay out of trouble, and curb his lip. Just for a while. Until he starts earning the big figures again, enough to buy back the Captains’ respect.

“Martinex can fill you in,” Stakar tells Aleta.

“Not gonna do the honors yourself, old man?”

“Maybe later." He nods to Yondu, whose grin is slowly fading. “Udonta and I have important matters to discuss.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Tap, tap, tap.

It's nice to know that some things never change. One of them being that if you put Yondu in the same room as a Starhelix-cradle – a series of sol-diamonds with such a high oscillation rate that when you lift the end one and drop it, the energy will travel through and bounce the bead on the far side, and back again, for several hundred years – he's going to fiddle with it.

 

 

Tap, tap.

Yondu watches the balls meet, part, meet again. If he's not going to spark things off, Stakar might as well do the honors.

 

 

“Yondu,” he says.

 

 

The tapping stops. Yondu catches the ball midair. He glances at Stakar, then away again, a glint of jelly-pink eyes.

“Stakar,” he says, like he's trying to be mocking but can't quite muster the energy. He licks his lips – _nervous,_ Stakar's brain supplies; _self-defence, so he can whistle on command –_ and stares at the sparkling desk toy with intense ferocity as he lays the bead to rest.

 

 

Stakar sighs. He reaches over the desk between them – as if that's the only divide – and confiscates it. “You're going to set that on fire if you stare at it any longer.”

“Sol-diamonds,” Yondu points out. “Forged in the heart of a star. Ain't like they burn.”

Everything burns if you’re determined, but Stakar isn't here to argue about physics. “Back there,” he says. “The captain's table.”

Yondu's spine goes stiff. “Didn't mean to cause no trouble."

“I know.” He feels like that's an important point to make. “The other captains, however...”

Yondu scowls at his hands. “They ain’t seein’ eye to eye with me.”

 

 

 _Of course_ _not,_ thinks Stakar. _You've barely looked anyone in them._

 

 

“It'll pass. But in the meantime, I need you to...” How does he phrase this? “Stop trying to be who you were. The Seven want you back, but the others have yet to be convinced. I believe I made my own opinions clear, but if they truly want to hurt you, I can't prevent it. You’re a target. It's better not to give anyone undue reason to strike.”

Yondu says nothing. That's not a good sign. Stakar should sit back, regroup, think it through – but for every second the silence stretches and Yondu doesn't look at him, something cold twists tighter in his chest.

He wonders, all of a sudden, what the hell Yondu was thinking as he flew through Ego's fading atmosphere, the air dwindling from his lungs. Stakar promised him no lights over his grave and no afterlife beyond it, so Yondu suffocated there, holding his son’s face, knowing full well that he wouldn't ride through the furls of the nebula with his brothers. That he was bound to a lightless, thoughtless eternity, that he would cease to exist.

 

 

He gave Quill the spacesuit anyway. Stakar doesn't like to think about why that terrifies him.

 

 

“It's just for a while,” he tries, powering up one of the datadexes from his slush pile: requests that come to the Ravagers from new sources, contacts and clients they've never vetted, everything from thievery to assassination to pro-bono. “Let's talk jobs. Fastest way into any Ravager's heart is through their wallet. We need to get you and your crew earning.”

“I don't got no crew.”

“Come again?"

Yondu shifts from asscheek to asscheek like a kid on the naughty-step. “I don't got no crew,” he repeats.

Stakar puts the pad down. “You're not talking metaphorically, are you.”

 

 

Yondu shakes his head.

 

 

“Peter Quill – he left?”

“This mornin',” says Yondu in a horrendously flat voice. Oh dear. “Few hours before the meet. Was gonna say somethin', but...”

“It's a good thing you didn't.” No need to give the captains _more_ ammunition. A crew of seven – Stakar doesn’t count the creepy tree-thing – might be able to run a galleon the size of the _Quadrant_ , short-term. A crew of one, though? Two, if that Obfonteri boy is still hanging around?

 

 

Stakar swallows the sour taste in the back of his mouth.

 

 

“So,” he says, striving to sound... well, not chipper. But confident. Not like he's lost hope. “We tackle recruitment first. Knowhere is good at this time of year – any miners will be halfway through their terms of commission.” Far enough in that they’ll be desperate to escape Tivvan's crackpot tyranny; not far enough that the end is in sight. “You can capitalize on that.”

Yondu nods, though he couldn’t be more obviously not-listening if he had his kid’s earphones plugged in. A desolation clouds his eyes, like saying the words – _Quill's gone –_ has suddenly made them real.

 

 

Stakar hurries along.

“Failing that” – because no sane man wants to fly under a mutinied captain – “you can try the sink planets at the fringe of Xandar territory. The men there'll do anything they have to, if it'll earn them money. They’re no good for permanent crew – too disorderly for that. But they’ll give you something to start with.”

“I know. S'where I picked most of my lot last time.” Yondu sucks a stilted breath. “Stakar. Listen. Between Contraxia an' Kreespace, there's a helluva lotta dead.”

 

 

Oh. Stakar knows where this is going. And he hates the next words out of his mouth, necessary though they are.

“I can't give them the Colors, Yondu. You know that.”

 

 

Yondu, for some reason, looks pissed. He presses his hand – still a little frost-scarred – to his chest. “Wouldn't have given 'em me, either, I bet."

Stakar doesn't know. If he did, it would've been out of self-interest, because the Halls wouldn’t hold much allure if Yondu wasn't there waiting for him, slouched on a barrel of mead with a wink and a wily grin.

 

 

“Your crew weren't Ravagers,” Stakar says. “Not according to our Code.”

“Why? Cause they followed _me?_ ” He's getting hot again; the navy creeps up from under his collar, spilling over his face like an ink pot's been knocked onto a faded pair of Stakar's leathers. “Cause they was loyal?”

Stakar doesn't bother lying. “Yes.”

Yondu scoffs. He stands to leave.

 

 

Hell. Stakar's sick of one or both of them running away. From this. From _them._ From everything they've done to each other.

He catches Yondu's wrist.

 

 

Yondu freezes. Tension shoots through him, spreading from where Stakar's hand fastens on his forearm, thumb rubbing the tender patch just beneath his thumb.

“What?” he asks.

And Stakar? Stakar doesn't know what to say.

 

 

That's the problem with impulse actions. They're not his area of expertise. Oh, he can improvise – the universe delights in foiling a plan, and there's been many-a-time when plasma shots buffeted his M-ship because the guard patrol decided, on a whim, to set off on their rounds five minutes early.

Usually when things go wrong, Stakar's options come down to four. These are, in order of preference: more dakka, call for reinforcements, run away, or do something stupid.

 

 

Today, he opts for the last one.

 

 

He yanks. Yondu follows the tug on his wrist like a dog on a leash. He stumbles over the chair leg and sits, quite heavily, on the desk.

Stakar thinks he cracks a datapad. Stakar also doesn't care. Because before Yondu can open his mouth to complain, Stakar leans over his half of the table, catches Yondu's stubble-rough jaw, and twists him roughly into a kiss.

 

 

It's messy. Not from lack of practice, but between Yondu's shock and Stakar's desperate need to convey _he-doesn't-know-what_ , their tongues skate past each other, their teeth clack, and their noses narrowly avoid gaining another kink. It's an uncomfortable angle – Yondu's twisted halfway around himself, ribs dug into his squish.

He grunts against Stakar's mouth. It’s such a perfect grouchy noise that Stakar can't help but smile. He scoots back, bulldozing a path through the neat columns of work assignations and tries again.

 

 

This time, they fit.

 

 

Yondu keeps his eyes shut. He tastes a little bit like booze and a little like gum decay. Stakar doesn't care about that nearly as much as he should. Stakar doesn't care about anything, except that Yondu's here, Yondu's with him, Yondu's sucking his tongue like he doesn't want to let him go and letting Stakar knead his shoulder, stealing the stiffness from the warm blue flesh…

Stakar intended to take this slow. There’s a lot of love lost between them, grief and betrayal besides. This isn’t the sort of rift that can be solved with a handful of dick and a pinkie tucked in Yondu’s little cunt.

 

 

Stakar _knows_ that. And yet. _And yet._

It’s been so long. And Yondu’s here, and Yondu’s warm, and Yondu’s more pliant with every stroke of their tongues and – _oh._ Perhaps this is the way to fix things after all, if one for a while.

 

 

But when he moves his hand down, the tension returns.

 

 

Stakar pauses. He's cupping Yondu's chest, on the left, over his heart. The nipple ring – he still wears those? – digs through the thick leather shirt.

Yondu's still got his duster on, layered up like a Kree mummy in a sun-coffin. He gazes at Stakar, his mouth parted and shimmery with spit.

He doesn't push him away. Doesn't need to. He's not reciprocating, not clutching onto Stakar and moaning and wrapping his legs around his waist. Of course, that'd be harder than it used to be – Yondu might pop a hip. But the fact remains. While Yondu doesn't fight him, he doesn't say _yes_ either, not with his mouth or his hands or any bit beside.

 

 

Stakar draws back, a little unsettled. If there's one thing Yondu never has been, it's passive. This? He imagines Yondu'd let him do anything right about now, and he'd be stiller than a bot and about as enthusiastic.

Stakar doesn't want that.

 

 

Yondu seems to sense something's wrong; he pushes forwards, trying to kiss him again. His bottom lip pouts out and his grubby fangs flash.

Stakar lets him, selfishly. He savors it for five sweet seconds before he pulls away.

 

 

“I'm sorry,” he says, and watches Yondu's expression crumple like a planet struck by a meteor. “It's too soon.”

Yondu looks like he's been slapped – but then again, he seems to whenever Stakar opens his mouth. “I can...”

He gestures to Stakar's cock. He's soft – takes more than a kiss to get him chubbed nowadays. Another of age's perks. But there's potential, and warmth twines around Stakar's abdomen like ivy.

 

 

Also like ivy, it chokes him, just a little.

 

 

He turns to face the wall as he adjusts himself, smooths his rumpled hair. “This isn't a transaction.”

Yondu draws a sharp inhale. Not good - though it's a _reaction,_ at least _._ “Fuck, Stakar. I ain’t…”

“This also isn't wise. I'm sorry, Yondu. I wasn't thinking. With the way things are right now, I can't stand to be accused of favoritism.”

“Didn't think people exiled their favorites.”

 

 

They do though. Sometimes, when there isn't any other choice. Stakar shuts his eyes.

 

 

Yondu shuffles around – Stakar hears his leathers stick and squeak. He sits facing away from Stakar, the two of them back to back like that will make it as if the past five minutes never happened. He sets the metronome going again, tap, tap, tap.

Stakar doesn't want to kick him out, but at the same time, he's starting to wish his old friend would leave. He decides the best option is to let the silence putrefy until Yondu takes matters into his own hands.

Unfortunately, Yondu delights in doing the unexpected.

 

 

“Me an’ Kraglin,” he says eventually. “We hook up every now and then. Just so ya know.”

“Obfonteri?” Stakar spins around. He can hardly believe it. “The skinny guy? With the mohawk and the…?”

He gestures to his neck, where Kraglin has a takeaway order spelled out in vernacular A’askavarian. Whether it’s ironic or otherwise, it says plenty about him.

 

 

Yondu crosses his arms. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

“Well, good. Because he _looks_ like his eyes might pop out if you squeezed him.”

“You don’t know shit about him.” Yondu glowers at Stakar. It’s the most confrontational he’s been since he flailed out of bacta-induced coma-sleep, addled and dripping. Back then he tried to stab Stakar with the nearest sharp implement – one of the rodent’s tinkering tools – and hissed a particular Kree word between his teeth.

 

 

Stakar does his best to remember that word as little as possible.

 

 

“He stood by me, y’know," continues Yondu. "Coulda left, coulda done better by himself. But he didn't."

“He was a kid,” Stakar dismisses. He must’ve been – what, fifteen when Yondu scraped him out that gutter? Eighteen during the Exile. “It's not like he had anywhere else to go."

 

 

Yondu stands. He plants both palms flat on the desk (same desk Stakar used to fuck him over, thirty-odd years ago, tugging the hoops in his nipples and flicking his tiny clit to make him squeal. He can still see the scratches where Yondu’s nails chewed through the finish.)

In the present, Yondu watches him from beneath hooded eyes.

"You don't know shit," he insists, deadly quiet. "You don't fuckin' know."

 

 

Those scratches shine dirty orange. Iron rusts them out from the inside, like a festering wound.

Huh. Isn’t that an apt metaphor for everything?

 

 

“Tell you what.” Stakar retakes his seat. He lets Yondu tower over him, if that's what he needs to feel in control. “Next time we go out for a drink” –

“Who said there’d be a next time?”

“Next time,” Stakar repeats, with that simple self-confidence of one who knows there will be, “you invite your XO along.”

Yondu’s scowl turns furtive. “I don’t…”

 

 

 _Of course. For all that you hate feeling owned, you’re greediest of the lot._ Stakar smirks. “Don’t want to share?”

 

 

For a moment, Yondu looks stumped. Then, briefly, terrified. It's gone in a jiffy and he shakes his head like he's trying to negate that flash of vulnerability as he slopes square-shouldered for the door. "Pass."

This time, Stakar lets him leave. He watches the door slither shut and listens to the _tap-tap-tap_ of the Starhelix cradle until the sound bores through his brain and he has to stop it before he incinerates the damn toy and his whole office alongside.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm sick. T^T Sorry for any editorial weirdness; will probably get fixed when my brain's back in order! Feel free to point it out if you spot it. x As always, comments & kudos = love.**


	3. if hair be wires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **SO this sex scene is 100% inspired by the AMAZING fic _Revolution, baby_ by Lasertits that got me invested in this pairing last year. Please read it if you haven't already!**

Stakar Ogord has ruled over this bed for fifty years.

He’s fucked in it and he’s been fucked in it, he’s crashed on it bleeding and – one mortifying night after returning from the medbay with an inexpertly patched gutshot – he woke up with soaked sheets of a different sort. He’s laid his head down a million times after a million deeds of differing yet always dubious morality, and it’s very, very rare that he opens his eyes before the solars click on.

 

 

And yet tonight, for what feels like the first time since the exile, Stakar Ogord can’t sleep.

 

 

Ever since he flew the nest, shooting off his father’s planet in a stolen warship – the core of the _Starhawk,_ around which his colossal city is built – he’s laid claim to this cabin. The room is saturated in him. His sweat, his breath, the warm smoky stench of his leathers where they hang in the open wall-closet, the lightning-sharp zing from his solar arcs.

Once upon a time, it smelt of Yondu and Aleta too.

 

 

It’s a decent room, suited to his tastes. Not too ostentatious. Not full of frippery, like Yondu’s quarters used to be – lockets filched from passing lovers, a toy from every souvenir stand, pearls from a lady’s neck. Plastic and glass and star-diamonds twinkling side by side, no sense of value, like spoils from the overturned nest of a magpie.

Aleta, in contrast, was stingy about who entered her space. The few times they met in her quarters it was dark and messy, an assault-course of discarded clothing and dropped guns and other assorted trip hazards (A shrunken Bilgesnipe head? _Really,_ Aleta? Where did you even _find_ that?) They all lurked below Stakar’s eyeline with malicious intent and stubbed themselves on his toes.

 

 

So damn long ago.

The nostalgia gets harder to escape the older he grows. The present always fades – though Arcturans age a touch slower than the Xandarian average, hence his (mostly) full head of hair. ( _Yes, Aleta; I know it’s getting a bit thin at the back. Maybe if you stopped poking it, it’d stop shedding._ ) But the past? The past just keeps getting _brighter._

 

 

Stakar lies on his back. His solar arcs fill their dents in the mattress. He catalogs the sting in his thumb from where the orloni scratched him, along with the other little aches and pains, the ones that grow more constant by the year.

Stiff neck. Fingers swollen, stuck around the shape of a gun. A knee and a hip that pop whenever he stands.

He wonders whether Yondu does the same on his big empty shuttle, his mate curled around him like a dog.

 

 

Stakar thinks of them fucking, just because he can.

He pictures Yondu’s new weight and how it suits him – no longer the bone-thin whelp he pried out of a gun casement in a Kree warship, who bit him when he undid his gag and tried to whistle him dead. He’s grown into his skin, his place, his captaincy – even if he only rules over one man.

Stakar pictures him rolling back and forth, slow and luxurious, pinning Obfonteri to their filthy mattress each time he hilts. Gold and leather and grubby blue skin. The even rasp of his breath as he grinds against him, deep as he can get, making Obfonteri’s scrawny legs jump and his eyes bulge like a fish.

Or perhaps Yondu swivels onto Obfonteri’s cock – because Yondu’s always had his preferences, hasn’t he? He’d ride him demonic-slow. Rocking in place, Obfonteri’s knotty pubes scratching the lips of his tight little cunt. He’d nip him, mark him up, pull his quivering hands to guide his waist, let Obfonteri pluck at his pierced vestigial nipples and the smaller teats in his pouch, the pair of them bonded with bad breath and sour-smelling slick.

 

 

Course, skinny slip of a thing like Obfonteri can't give him what he really craves. Can't get him to that perfect state of soft and pliant _peace,_ the place Stakar and Aleta found for him, where he can let go of all the hubris and stop floundering for control and just _exist,_ nothing more, nothing less.

Stakar glances down. He discovers his hand tucked into his boxers, loosely cupping his half-risen cock.

 

 

 _What the hell,_ he thinks.

 

 

He sleeps in his underwear. His dick noses through the pissing slit: modest in length, stout in girth, ridges ruckling out from the tip in typical Arcturian fashion. Those flare in and out the closer he gets, although they don’t do too much of that nowadays.

Stakar doesn’t let that stop him. It’s been a stressful day. If now isn’t the time to indulge himself, he never will.

He methodically spits in his hands. He starts off with a lazy stroke, shifting the skin. The ridges nip between his calluses, strike the cut on his thumb.

It’s a bit rougher than he likes, so he spits again and again, until his palm glides. Only then does he unlock that gateway of memories and summon a few choice favorites to the fore.

 

 

He peruses them like he’s selecting a holovid to unwind to after a day in the field. No blaster-shot filled the air today, but they might’ve come close if he'd let Yondu run his mouth.

Mm. Yondu’s mouth. Kissing Aleta’s cunt, Stakar’s dick, as Yondu sprawled across their laps like a feline who’d gone unstroked for a whole thirty seconds. Deadly and ugly and beautiful and everything in between. 

Stakar usually selects Aleta to star in these solo jaunts. But it’s been so long since he even let himself think of Yondu as someone to desire that now he’s started, he can’t stop.

 

 

He starts to pull a bit faster, a bit firmer. His solar wings crackle and the light panel above the bed flutters in protest, overloading from the electrostatic pulse.

Stakar doesn't notice. His hand slides surely from base to tip.

 

 

Back to the beginning. That’s as good a place to start as any, right? How it all began…

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

The smell. He remembers the smell.

 

 

Overheating bot circuits, perfume squirted to mask the salt and sweat of a hundred alien orgasms. 

They’re in a hooker bar, several kliks centerwards from wherever-the-fuck their last job took them. Stakar hasn't retained the details. Only the velvet-red atmosphere, the blurry lights, the neon dancing girls on the sign, and Yondu's cheeky crack about dismissing the bots and going at each other – then his brilliant flush when Stakar agrees.

Yondu’s eyes – young, young eyes – shine from the smoke. They cast back the glow of the bordello lamps. His hands shake where they rest on Stakar’s hips.

 

 

“C’mon boy.” Stakar rocks against him, grinding them together.

He was younger too, back then. Maybe not quite as calculating, or as wise to the ways of the galaxy – but he had passion to make up for it. He loves Yondu's spitty gasp, the way his thighs latch tight on Stakar's leg.

“Tell me what you want.”

 

 

Yondu pants when Stakar mouths his neck. “C’n I fuck you,” he whispers, even as he tips his head so blunt teeth can graze the flutter of his pulse, opens himself to the press of Stakar’s leg between his. When there’s no answer, all that lovely tension stiffens into a different sort. “Or, uh…”

Stakar doesn’t say a word. He just crushes his mouth on Yondu’s.

 

 

His nicks his lip on Yondu's eyetooth. Blood soaks their tongues, binding in their spit like dissolved iron. He grabs under Yondu’s ass, hoists him up, takes him to where he belongs.

Yondu squawks when he's dropped on the bed, shrill as a hawk. Stakar soothes his ruffled feathers, palming the bulge in the boy's pants until wet seeps through the fabric round the zip.

 

 

A blue hand catches his, knocking it away. For a moment Stakar's pulse rings wild in his ears and his solar wings spark –  _what did I do_? But then Yondu rasps something hoarse about _not having the usual equipment_ like he thinks that's gonna throw off Stakar's groove.

Stakar licks the wet off his thumb. Huh. Kinda tangy. “Got a dick?”

 

 

Yondu nods.

 

 

“Knot? Spikes?”

“S'just a dick,” Yondu mutters, though he's not meeting Stakar's eyes. Stakar can see the dent where he's chewing on the inside of his cheek.

 

 

“What else you got?” he asks kindly.

Yondu figures it'd be easier to show him.

 

 

“Too tight for anythin' much.” His hand quivers where it holds apart his zipper. Stakar barely hears the words. “Can't get nothin' but fingers inside it.”

And a tongue, Stakar's willing to bet.

 

 

“Stars,” he croaks. “I'm gonna eat that until you pass out, boy.”

 

 

Yondu pushes his knees together – then tentatively peels them apart. He watches Stakar as an orloni watches a predatory skrank, like he's mentally calculating the distance to the door, working out whether he could bolt before Stakar catches him.

Ah. Stakar swallows his drool.

 

 

“Hey now. You don't want me to touch it? I don't touch it. Don't even gotta talk about it if that ain't your thing.”

Mighty shame, of course – but as much as those slick little lips mean _fun_ (and they _are_ slick, Stakar sees, and well, _that_ explains why Yondu reacted so beautifully to a leg shoved between his) he's not just in this for the hedonism.

Kid's a decent Ravager. He's greedy and bawdy, but smart and devious and wily as all hells when he wants to be – not that you'd know it right now. He's everything Stakar wants.

 

 

And – hey. Yondu said he wanted to do the fucking.

 

 

So Stakar undoes the buckle that tethers his jacket around his solar wings, grabs the lube that’s been left beside the nightlight – thank you, madame – and gets right to it.

Yondu fucks like he’s never topped before. Stakar has his suspicions, though he doesn’t voice them. You don’t poke sore points, not in the bedroom – not unless your name’s Aleta.

 

 

But Aleta isn’t here now. There’s Yondu and his rabbity little bounces, high on the atmosphere, gnawing along the corded rope of Stakar’s shoulder, licking his solar wing and jolting at the shock. He draws out too far and misses on the in-thrust until Stakar, chuckling, takes a hot and slippery handful and guides him back into place.

 

 

Yondu pouts. Slick runs down his thighs, thicker than sweat, gluing their damp skin together. He grumbles something about being a full-grown Ravager what can handle his own business – although he still cums within five minutes, which kinda disproves his point.

Stakar doesn’t hold it against him. Can’t, when the boy muffles his wail against his throat, sharp teeth scraping. He grabs a solar arc and shudders like he’s being tazed, spilling wetly inside.

 

 

He looks down, once he’s come back to himself. The lovely blue blush darkens.

“Uh, you didn’t…”

 

 

“We can work on that,” Stakar promises him. It’s worth it to have Yondu like this, rumpled and boneless, curling over him and gasping for a kiss. Stakar indulges him, guiding him into it by the back of his neck.

He cups the implant, one finger hooked through the ring in his ear. Yondu breathes his air and he breathes Yondu’s, eyes locking point-blank.

 

 

“What do you say, boy? How's about I show you how it's done?"

“Oh – fuck yeah.” Yondu damn near knees himself in his eagerness to spread his legs. He's hairless, except for his little goatee; not like Aleta, who’s never shaved so much as an armpit. He feels damn near satin-smooth, and Stakar’s ridges flare just for the want of being buried inside him.

He can’t though. Not yet.

 

 

“You just came, kid. Might hurt.”

“S’okay,” says Yondu, far too fast. And sure, he might not be the most experienced when it comes to using his pecker, but you don’t sound that blasé about a cock up your ass unless you know what you like.

Yondu seems to realize, because he sinks his teeth into Stakar’s meaty shoulder, right next to the zapping arc. God, Stakar wants him. To hold, to torment, to play with again and again.

 

 

His wings ignite. It shocks them both, leaving a sharp stink of ozone. Static dances on every finger, the tip of Stakar's tongue. Energizing, electrifying. Lighting them up from inside. 

“Wanna take it, boy?" he growls. "Wanna be all sore and aching for it, huh? Wanna be held down and fucked so deep you feel it in your teeth?”

Yondu digs a malevolent tongue into the bite. “If you can handle all that, old man.”

But beneath the cheek, he’s quivering – like prey, just the way Stakar likes ‘em.

 

 

It’s good enough. Stakar eases him back like he’s giving him baptism, laying him flat on the sheets. He crawls up his body, pushing one of Yondu’s legs to his chest, straddling him corkscrewed. He doesn't touch his pussy once – doesn't look at it, much as he wants to.

Yondu’s dick flops sticky-soft. It twitches when Stakar rubs back and forth, sawing over his crease. Stakar's pubes kiss his other hole, a delicate tickle. They come back glistening.

 

 

Yondu stares at Stakar with huge, beautiful eyes. When Stakar opens him he sighs like he’s been waiting for this, for Stakar, his entire life.

 

 

Stakar has always been good at resisting temptation. Not so today. Yondu’s offered himself up and so Stakar feasts, glutting himself on hot slick skin, pinching his pierced nips and tracing the velvety lip of his pouch, nibbling on the hoops in his ears until Yondu melts beneath him, moaning his name like he’s seen god.

 

 

He takes everything Stakar gives him over the next few years, a greedy little demon in his bed. He sucks him and he screws him – he doesn’t get much better at that, and Stakar suspects he’s doing it more out of curiosity than desire.

But hey. He’s young. He wants to experiment, and Stakar’s up for any and everything – including letting Yondu ride him in his M-ship cockpit, gripping his solar arcs for stability and clenching beautifully with every zap. The pilot straps clink against their belts in 0-G, blown engines cooling as they drift out past the edge of Knowhere into uncharted space.

 

 

When Aleta comes to their rescue she finds them half-dead from hypoxia, naked from the waist down. She calls them idiots in every language she knows and a few she doesn’t.

Later, when Yondu eats Aleta's cum off Stakar’s fingers, his lips linger too long. He gazes up at Stakar, deadly mouth glossed, eyes leaking pure devotion, and Stakar thinks that this might be love.

 

 

Then a child goes missing on Kymellia and it all comes tumbling down.

 

 

Stakar sits on his bed, cock in a wrinkled hand. His pulse throbs scalding for all of two beats. Then it fades, dying slow, falling, shrivelling, shrinking from his grip.

The frustration remains, twisting inside him like a wire thing with hooks. But Stakar isn’t getting hard again, and frankly, he’s not sure he wants to.

 

 

That kid. That was what it came down to.

 

 

Millai, she was called. Little shrimp of a thing, all pink Kylorian skin and fluffy violet hair. Stakar wasn't inclined to poetry, but when her family – uncles, aunts, no ma or pa – said that she had eyes like chips of amethyst, looking at her holo on the glitchy palm-held datadot, he thought he could see it, just a little.

A Ravager took her, they said. Stakar scoffed at first, because Ravagers didn't do that. Even if those with such foul proclivities had infiltrated his ranks, they were smart enough to keep it to themselves.

But he asked for a description, because this _was_ a serious matter after all. His faction had regular business of Kyloria, and a smuggling operation couldn't run without the support of the locals, even if the only part they played was looking the other way should they accidentally uncover a stash of dusty moonshine bottles buried in the roots beneath one of the vast, sky-scraping gorrelai trees. One of the uncles approached him, hunched into himself, snivelling. He didn't look like the sort of man who feigned a lost child for profit. And they weren't asking for money, _no really they weren't, Ogord sir_ – just if he'd please help them find their little girl.

 

 

Nevertheless, when Stakar first heard the words – _blue skin, red implant, red eyes, captain's flame on his breast –_ he assumed nothing more than slander.

“Yondu really pissed you off, huh?”

It was only when the man blinked those wet purple eyes at him and whispered, “Who's Yondu?” that that lead ball in Stakar's chest began to drop, a diving bell that plunged towards the bottom of his stomach.

 

 

Yondu tried to deny it. But he could see it in Stakar's eyes, even as he held him up against the wall and pleaded quietly for him to tell him it wasn't true. He could see Stakar already knew, that he'd been poisoned against him, that no excuse in the galaxy could save him.

Thank the stars that Stakar's first, worst, hysterical fear – that Yondu concealed a rotten lust from him in all the years they were together, and that the little girl was in his cabin – fell flat. After he threw that accusation, Yondu became a lot more informative, muttering under his breath about lonely fathers who couldn't leave their planet, and children without parents who wanted someone to love them, and surely it wasn't _dealing in kids,_ not really, if you were just giving them a ride to their new home and receiving the fuel fees in return?

 

 

Extortionate fuel fees, as it turned out. And Stakar unfurled his feelers into the great libraries of the co-Empire Archiving Initiative, digging up one old news story after another – dead mothers, missing children, dating back _centuries._

 

 

Yondu was the latest stooge in a millennia-long scheme. And it didn't matter whether Ego had played him, or – if when Stakar showed him the results and coldly asked whether he'd ever seen the children, in all the times he descended to the planet's surface, although a garden that beautiful should have been teeming with them, Yondu's face sunk in on itself like it was collapsing and he sat heavily on Stakar’s bed (the same bed Stakar lies on now) elbows on his knees and head in his shaking hands.

He didn't fight for himself, in the end. Not his titles, not his crew, none of it. Just stood before the captains' tribunal and accepted every word they hurled at him with a numbness too blank to be interpreted as dignity.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It's the middle of the night shift. Stakar shrugs on his coat.

He ignores the curious stares of the on-duty Ravagers, to whom the Admiral is a faraway snoring figure except in times of crisis. This classifies, if only in Stakar's head.

 

 

He storms into the aviary. The hawks screech at the intruder. They fly at him, beating their tiny wings in threat.

Stakar slides down the wall, hitting the floor hard enough that it shoots up through his hip, a bolt of pain that throbs and lingers and throbs again.

 

 

It's there Aleta finds him. She looks despicably chipper as she leans against the doorframe.

“Don't know why you keep these things,” she says, smirking at the nearest hawks as if daring it to swoop in and steal a thread of her long oily hair. “All they do is make noise and shit.”

“Like babies then,” Stakar croaks. Aleta snorts.

“Yeah, like babies. Now, you best get that wide-load ass of yours in gear if you want to catch Yondu before blast off.”

“Blast off?” Stakar scrubs a tired hand over his stubble. The hell's he blasting off for? It's not morning shift.

 

 

His mind flits, as usual, to worse-case-scenario. The other captains have done something – hurt Yondu's mate, tortured Yondu, threatened to scupper them if they see their lame excuse for a galleon defiling the dock comes Lights-up.

Aleta pauses, one foot in the airlock. This area isn't in danger of a breach, but Stakar had the double-door installed anyway. It reduces the hawks' chance of being successful on their biweekly bid for escape. They circle above her, sulkily, not daring to edge past.

“He said a certain someone told him Knowhere was good for recruitment at this time of the year.”

 

 

Stakar squints up at her, not yet having braved the trek up the wall. It'll result in several clicks and more cusses, and he doesn't need to give Aleta another reason to snigger at him and scratch his little bald patch with her sharp, grubby nails.

“Why do I need to go and see him off?”

“ _Because,_ fool, an exiled captain who got mutinied on by his own damn crew isn't going to get much traction.”

 

 

Stakar knows where this is going. “But an exiled captain accompanied by his old Admiral might. Why are you telling me this?” It's not like her to play messenger. “What did Yondu promise you in return?”

Aleta rolls her shoulders through a lazy shrug. “Nothing much.”

Stakar resists the urge to knead his temples. That would be showing weakness – something you never did in front of a predator. “ _Aleta..._ ”

“Just a favor, is all. Unspecified, for me to decide on at a later date.”

 

 

The hell was Yondu thinking? There are three people you don’t make _deals_ with in this galaxy, and their names are Lady Thanatos, Malekith, and Aleta Ogord. She’ll milk him for everything he’s worth. This is a steep-sided arrangement, and from Aleta's grin, she knows it.

 

 

Stakar sighs. Still, he can’t very well butt in and demand she go easy on him. Yondu is an adult – practically a senior citizen by the standards on Xandar. If he winds up paying through the nose just to have Aleta come and tell Stakar that his presence would be appreciated on this roadtrip – well. He doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself.

“I'm coming,” he says, and begins the achy struggle to his feet. The hawks flutter, demanding breakfast in noisy caws. No time to indulge them. Stakar assigns fodder-duty to a passing member of the junior crew. He has more important business to take care of – such as massaging the shape of the wall out of his spine before Aleta sees fit to tease him about it.

 

 

That endeavor isn't a successful one. But, Stakar hopes, Yondu's recruitment rally will be.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

“What changed your mind?” is the first thing he asks, watching the _Starhawk_ recede through the rear airlock window. “Way you walked out yesterday, didn't seem you wanted me around.”

He doesn't mention the kiss. Not because of Obfonteri – the kid hadn't looked happy to see Stakar marching up the boarding ramp, but he's slaving away on the Bridge, giving the two captains their privacy.

 

 

Oh, Stakar bets he's checking the cameras. He cases them, one-two-three, with the ease of a born crook, and imagines bending Yondu over one of the many empty supply crates in the corner. Fucking him sweet and slow enough to make Obfonteri simmer, then greeting him straight-faced as if it never happened.

But that's _petty,_ and Stakar, with his nearing centenary, strives to at least project a semblance of maturity. Maybe he would've done, twenty years back, but for now he's more concerned with Yondu himself – how he's standing right beside him but staring a million lightyears into the distance.

Most likely, he's following the swoop of an M-ship, one of the many gifts Stakar had given the _Quadrant's_ crew.

 

 

He assumed the kids would hang around rather than zooming off along the starways first chance they got. But then again, while he hasn't exactly been _keeping tabs_ on his old sometime friend, rumors are easy to catch.

Space is a bell jar that echoes stories back upon each themselves a thousand-fold, twisting and warping with each retelling. Apparently, even before that whole Ego-business went south, the Quill-Udonta alliance had been fraught for quite some time.

 

 

Yondu rests a hand on the glass, sticky with condensation. “Ship's mighty big for two,” is all he says.

 

 

He doesn't look at Stakar once, not even in the reflection, and when Stakar squeezes his shoulder Yondu stays frigidly tense until he moves away.

“Alright,” Stakar says. He tramps up the slope, heading through the broad storage bay, past the ghostly silhouettes of empty M-ship mounts and towards the draughty, rust-woven corridors beyond. “Next stop – Knowhere.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Between three jumps and a short burst of thrust-burn, it should take just under a Standard cycle to reach Knowhere. Yondu's shuttle, which grinds through the aether on engines dodderier than any of them, might manage it in three.

They trundle along at a leisurely pace, slow enough for Obfonteri to awkwardly point at the passing stars. He amuses himself that way until Yondu informs him, in a gruff whisper, that _yeah, Stakar might be a stylus-pushing office dweller_ (which rankles, although as Stakar has been too busy micromanaging to take missions in over an Annual, it’s not like he has any evidence to the contrary). _But he's still a spacer, and he knows what a quasar is, numbnuts._

 

 

Obfonteri glares at Stakar even more after that.

 

 

Stakar enjoys it, perhaps a little more than he should. The guy’s younger than Yondu, far younger than Stakar. But while he defers to Yondu with a diligence that can only be borne of guilt, something about him – his filed lead teeth, his shrewd blue eyes – sets Stakar on edge.

He can’t put his finger on what, exactly. Can’t tell if he likes it either, or if it’s like having the hair on his back stroked in the wrong direction.

 

 

But one thing’s for sure, and that’s this: as they slide through the first jump point, slow as a cock through a virgin ass, and Yondu staggers sideways against the console, Kraglin’s stare clings to the arm Stakar loops around his waist, the way he steadies him easy and natural as breathing.

 

 

He mutters something about checking fuel gauges. When Yondu doesn’t respond, too busy trying to wriggle free without looking like that's his goal, Kraglin makes a harsh scoffing _tchka_ noise in the back of his throat. He storms away, boots ringing against the walkway’s wire frames.

Stakar watches him with a touch of intrigue and far more amusement.

 

 

Exclusive relationships don’t exactly gel into Ravager life. Too long spent apart, too many lightyears between ships and ports. He and Aleta certainly wouldn't have lasted as long as they had if they'd only fucked each other - there'd have been reports of a double homicide before the end of their first year off Arcturus.

But, Stakar supposes, if you’re fucking your second-in-command, the man who watches your blind spots so you don’t have to, things might get a little more… _convoluted._

Yondu clears his throat. He's close enough for Stakar to smell how long it's been since his last shower. There’s desperation in his eyes, and though he doesn’t fling Stakar’s arm away from him or kick him in the goolies and run, he looks like he’s giving both options considerable thought.

 

 

Stakar releases him. He lets Yondu scoot to the far side of the Bridge, taking his sour smell with him. He promptly engrosses himself in the nav relay, layering up shells of holographic light until all Stakar can see of him are his legs, short and booted, poking from the bottom of the bubble.

Their course is already set. Doesn’t need no adjustments. But Stakar knows what Yondu's up to, and he doesn’t call him out on it.

He wanders to the gunner’s chair, folding onto the patched leather. He says nothing about the stuffing that squirts from under his ass or the worrying creak, much less the orange, oxidized dust that sprinkles him from above, flaking off the pipes in the ceiling.

 

 

Yondu dismisses the charts with some guff about a High-G slingshot being wonky. Judging by his hunched posture, he already knows that his ship wouldn’t pass muster if Stakar was issuing a proper inspection.

He’s waiting for the taunt. If Aleta was here, he’d hear it. But while Yondu has always been able to laugh off Aleta’s critiques, generously given though they are, whenever Stakar opens his mouth the man takes it like a punch to his heart.

 

 

Stakar doesn’t want that, not today. He keeps his lips fastened and stares out at the constellations that cluster tight as neurons in a cosmos-spanning brain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank each and every reader <3 And each and every commenter and kudos-bestower especially!**


	4. roses damasked, red and white

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: warning, contains a brief description of a dude with two sets of genitalia gradually changing his perspectives of his body, _told from a cis guy's perspective who takes all the credit for 'making him more comfortable with his cunt'_. Stakar can be nice, on occasion, but he's still not a good guy.**

Ten cabins loiter along the meanders of corridor between the Bridge and the mess hall. They're single or double, designated to the ranking men. This shuttle formed the _Eclector's_ core, once upon a year. It's still got all the vitals: dorm space for the grunts, a basic galley, wash racks (not that Yondu uses them) and an armoury.

 

 

Yondu steers him away from that. Most likely, he doesn't want him to know it's empty.

 

 

Stakar lets him have his secrets. He also lets Yondu hustle him past the captain's quarters, towards the cabin beside.

The Stakar of three decades ago would've cracked a joke about _not gonna invite me in?_ Today's Stakar just frowns.

“Isn't this XO’s?”

 

 

Kraglin has mastered Aleta's trick of melding soundlessly from shadows. “Mostly bed down with cap'n,” he says, following it up with a far-too casual shrug. His mean eyes bore into Stakar's, unblinking as a hawk. “Y'know. First mate's duty to watch his back when there's them around who'd stab him in it.”

“Obfonteri,” Yondu snaps, before Stakar can raise a brow.

“Yessir?” He's good at playing innocent, at least.

Yondu falls for it about as far as Stakar does. “This here's Admiral of the whole fuckin' fleet.” He stalks towards his beanstring of a mate, catching him with a fist balled in his grubby collar. “I know we ain't flown in formation” -

“Since he exiled us, sir?”

 

 

Yondu looks perilous seconds away from punching him. He opts for a scowl instead. “ _Obfonteri._ Yer testin' yer stars-damned luck.”

Kraglin's sneer twists into something more petulant, then abruptly, guilty.

“Yessir,” he mumbles. He drops his gaze from Stakar's. His bottom lip pouts over his stubbly nub of a chin. “Sorry, sir. I'll take first watch.”

 

 

They watch him trudge away. Even his mohawk looks droopy. That's not great. Yondu has so few people beside him that he can't risk losing another.

 

 

“Last watch is mine then.” Stakar waves vaguely at his cabin door. “I need to sleep.” Not entirely a lie – his neck has the sort of stiffness that's usually associated with rigor mortis. But Stakar can't claim not to have ulterior motives.

Running a shuttle with three people isn't going to be fun. They'll need to rotate, two men covering each shift. Means they only have to deal with one of the others at a time, rolling around the chronometer dial. Stakar doesn't look forwards to being alone with Obfonteri, but that's a whole eight hours away yet.

 

 

Yondu considers being stubborn for all of a second. But he glances between Stakar and the corner around which Obfonteri has vanished, and Stakar knows his decision is made.

“Go on,” Stakar says, a little kinder. That's the best way to get Yondu to do what you want. Barking orders leaves him champing at the bit – or your fingers, if you're not careful. He’ll backchat, leer and sneer, push your buttons, disobey you just to see what you'll do.

But be good to him? Well that's a gamble in itself. Either he'll capitalize on it – swindle you, rob you for all you're worth, fly away cackling about _sentiment_. Else he'll melt, reluctant but beautiful, and be yours for life.

 

 

Stakar watches Yondu's eyes for the first signs of the thaw. As usual, Yondu's first to look away.

 

 

Stakar swallows his sigh. “This cabin, right?”

Yondu grunts an affirmative. He shuffles up to Stakar and stands a little too close until Stakar, amused, steps to one side. Yondu knocks on the door panel by his shoulder. The door buzzes open with the sort of arthritic languor Stakar associates with his toe joints during solar storms.

“Thanks,” he says.

Yondu lifts one shoulder. “Don't mention it, Admiral.”

 

 

That last word sounds awkward. Pasted on, more to make a point than anything. Yondu's double-thump at his chest rings equally hollow, as if there's nothing left in there to rattle. He turns a little too fast, chasing Kraglin towards the Bridge.

Stakar steps inside. The cabin is... Well, not _clean._ There's a big-ass bloodstain in place of a rug for starters, along with several chunks of carbonized brain matter.

 

 

Stakar's had worse bedfellows. But you can't recruit a new crew while the gunky remains of the old are crackling off the wall like modern art.

“Dammit, Yondu.”

 

 

He rubs his boot over the stain. Flakes peel off, but without the aid of solvents and a helluva lot of elbow grease the color – rich red, like a good port – is there to stay.

No wonder Quill and his friends jumped ship. They didn't want to get stuck on scutwork.

Dammit. This is far from ideal. He can’t turn back to the _Starhawk_ and have a bunch of boys on Disciplinary wash the _Quadrant_ top-to-tail. The undercaptains have yet to fly the coop; they're busy finalizing tithe-cuts, rosters, lists of potential clients, and filing dead and new crew with Mainframe (whose ability to tap into the holonet and recall endless reams of data makes for a mighty fine bookkeeper). If they see the _Quadrant_ chug back into dock with anything other than a full crew at the pulsar-canons, it'll only strengthen their conviction that Yondu's weak.

 

 

Rebellions are cumulative. It's not a single mistake that ousts an Admiral, but several combined. Shit choice after shit choice after shit choice, all heaped one atop the other, propping up a legacy as ramshackle as the Sakaarian slums. The end result is so precarious that all it takes is one little push.

Stakar stands over that bloody stain, tongue tapping the back of his teeth. Then he goes to find a mop.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

He sleeps well – better than his last attempt. Ravager life isn't luxurious, even for an Admiral. Stakar is more than used to putting his head down wherever he may be, bed or bunk or prison cell. The mattress is a touch harder than his preference, but that’s just him being fussy. What Stakar finds harder to stomach is the lived-in quality of the room.

The bed is softened with the aid of five chintzy pillows, liberated from a down-market bot-brothel. The rest of the furniture looks to be hand-made. It’s all recycled: here a chair sandpapered out of an antique thruster, there a desk composed of hull-plates sawn to imprecise lengths. It's a little wobbly but no less quaint for it.

 

 

Stakar wakes in good time for his shift. He sits at that desk, running his fingertips back and forth along the edge. Whoever made it decided to add some bevelling for a finishing touch. It must've taken an age, scooping out even chunks with a knife at intervals.

That’s impressive. In Stakar’s experience, patience is in short supply on a fully-fucntional pirate ship.

But this man did it. He even made a matching shelf, lined with datadots. It's a motley collection – salvage, most likely. Books found in derelict ships, left adrift so long that their engine cores passed their half-life, rad-signatures frittering to nothing. Cookery books sit beside cheesy Xandarian romance novellas, and a palm-sized pad of Vogon poetry whose title makes Stakar queasy. It says an uncomfortable amount about the man whose remains Stakar swabbed from the floor plates.

 

 

He's grateful for the knock on the door. He pulls it open, smile at the ready, expecting to see Yondu. That's the way it works, after all; the person leaving their shift alerts the next on the rota.

 

 

His grin dims when he finds himself looking up rather than down.

 

 

Obfonteri knocks out a reluctant salute. “Time to go, sir,” is all he says.

Or rather: he _intends_ for that to be all he says. He glances over Stakar's shoulder – easily, the lanky twig. His eyes form perfect circles.

“You, uh. Cleaned up? Admiral?”

Stakar's honestly surprised he had to. He would've thought the first order upon regaining his ship would've been for Yondu to destroy all evidence that a mutiny ever occurred.

“I can think of a few things I’d rather be doing during my night shift,” he says. Yondu, for one. He means it to be light-hearted, but Obfonteri's expression tightens again.

 

 

Shit. Obviously, he's got it into his head that Stakar is some sort of threat.

 

 

That wouldn't bother him under normal circumstances – Stakar is more than used to green-eyed pups snapping at his heels, scratching and snarling, hissing to bring him down off his pedestal. Usually, he ekes fun from it. Nothing like a challenge to keep an old mind spry, and the rush of leaving a whippersnapper in the dust is like no other.

But there’s more at stake here than his rep, or his title. If he fucks this up, Yondu could lose someone he cares about.

Stakar took everything from him a long time ago. He’s not going to swan back into his life and kick away the stragglers as if he's the only one who deserves Yondu's love. Even if a part of him wants to.

 

 

Time for a subject change.

 

 

“So,” says Stakar, motioning ahead: a reminder that if Kraglin wants him to take Yondu's post on Bridge, he needs to get out of his doorway. “Who was the late unfortunate occupant of my cabin?”

Kraglin's chin dissolves into his neck. “Tullk,” he mutters, and stomps away fast as he can, putting his long legs to good use.  
Stakar's too old to jog after him. He glances at the door to the captain's cabin, behind which Yondu is presumably hiding.

Did he forget to wake Stakar? Or did he choose not to and send Kraglin in his stead?

Stakar hoped for better, just like he'd hoped for Yondu to perform simple fucking tasks like mopping up after his own murders.

 

 

He contemplates storming in, hauling him out of bed and shaking him until he looks Stakar in the eyes. He thinks of snow drifts and gyrating bot-hookers and _you broke all our hearts,_ and a man holding his son's face as they floated through the black, ready to die even though he knew no lights awaited him.

“Dammit,” he mutters. He stomps after Kraglin. “Obfonteri?”

 

 

The dwindling figure pauses, like it's contemplating whether or not it can get away with pretending it didn't hear.

 

 

Stakar injects a little more authority into his voice. “Obfonteri! Here, now.”

Obfonteri's shoulders hike up. He dawdles his way back to Stakar. “Yessir?”

“Are there any more, uh, _stains?_ Like poor Tullk back there?”

“Tullk?” Kraglin squints, like he wasn't the one to tell Stakar the identity of his roomie not five minutes back. Then realization dawns. “That weren't Tullk, sir. Thas Tullk's room, but the dead guy were Jibbo. He set up camp there after all the shit – sorry, ish, went down.”

“No need to mind your language, Obfonteri. I’ve heard cusses that’d make your mother’s chest hair curl.” Stakar mulls it over while Obfonteri processes that. “What happened to this 'Tullk' fella?”

“Out the airlock, sir.” Obfonteri glares like that's Stakar's fault too.

 

 

Hell. Stakar might be a bad guy, but he’s real tired of playing up the act so Yondu and his mate can wallow in their failings. He didn't cause the mutiny. No matter how Obfonteri spins it, this one's not on him.

 _What do you want me to do?_ he wants to shout. _Round them all up, give them a funeral none of my captains think they deserve? Or perhaps you'd rather I break into Thanos's vaults, steal an Infinity Stone, bring them back from the dead?_

 

 

He doesn't say any of that out loud. He's fairly sure Obfonteri's answer would be 'yes'.

 

 

“Where's the next one,” he growls instead, heading for the supply closet. “We got work to do.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Seventy splatters later, their shift dwindles to a close. Stakar and Obfonteri settle into a rhythm of communication. It’s all “Here!” or “There!”, or occasionally (if they're feeling adventurous) “Missed a spot!”

Obfonteri’s careful to never drop the ‘sir’, but Stakar knows he’s sorely tempted. That surly shit-smear of a Hraxian couldn’t be more obvious about his lack of respect if he spat at Stakar every time he looked at him, instead of only thinking about it.

Still, they get through the bulk of the cleaning without incident. Seems like they’ve both got experience of working with people they dislike.

 

 

The manual labor makes the benefits of sleeping flat out on a bed redundant. Stakar _aches._ He lets Kraglin push the hovering mop trolley, pretending he's delegating while he rotates his shoulders in their sockets and prays he never has to stoop over and scrub at a crusted chunk of spleen again. His only consolation is that Obfonteri looks as sweaty as he does. 

“Don't do this sorta thing often?” Stakar asks. It's supposed to be an icebreaker, but Obfonteri detests making anything easy. He prickles like he's licked Stakar's solar arcs and scowls at him over his shoulder.

“I _am_ First Officer, y'know. Sir.”

 

 

Stakar ought to disengage, chuckle, maybe apologize. He isn't too proud to say sorry, especially when he doesn't mean it. It’s a personality trait that has proved immeasurably helpful over his long and eventful term of office.

But hell. He's cranky. He's stiff. And there's something lurking under Kraglin's sallow, sour exterior. A knife blade, of which Stakar only catches the occasional glint.

 

 

“Not officially, of course," he says. "You'd need my approval for that. Yondu promoted you after the exile.”

 

 

He expects at least a snarky comeback. But Kraglin only winds tighter, curls more into himself.

“I'll drop these off,” he grates, shoving the trolley more viciously than is necessary. “Then I'm turnin' in, sir. I'll wake up cap'n, tell him to come find ya.”

Stakar sighs. “I apologize, Obfonteri. That was uncalled for.”

 

 

For some reason, rather than nodding with good grace, Kraglin sputters a laugh. He stifles it mighty quick, but it still racks down his scrawny spine, shaking him like atmospheric re-entry.

Stakar frowns. “Is something amusing?”

“No sir.” Kraglin wipes his sweaty face, still smirking. “Ain’t nothin'.”

 

 

Stakar isn't going to let him get away with it that easily. “Come on now. What?”

Kraglin shuffles around to face him, leaning back on the hovering trolley. His weight is slight enough that it doesn’t trip the gravimetric sensor and scoot the trolley forwards. The solar wings on Stakar's shoulders don't seem to faze him. In fact, he looks damn near unafraid.

 

 

Been a while since any upstart looked at him like that. Suddenly, Stakar needs to know.

 

 

“Speak plainly,” he says. _Don’t make me make it an order._

“I know men like you.”

“Do you, now?”

Kraglin looks him in the eye. Stakar gets another crackle of _danger –_ lightning under his skin. “Yeah. I do. You never mean to hurt anyone, but you do it all the same.” He shrugs when Stakar’s eyebrows take a downwards dive. “You said speak plainly, sir. I’m speakin’.”

Stakar can’t fault him that. “Carry on.”

Kraglin’s getting into the swing of it now. “And ya just keep hurtin’ people. Tellin’ yerself it’s for their own good. Again an’ again, over an’ over, til one day there ain’t nothin’ left to break.”

 

 

Oh, is that what he thinks is happening? That Stakar’s still punishing Yondu? For the children, for the betrayal? Hiding malice under a smile?

Fool. He doesn’t know anything about this. Anything about _them._

 

 

Kraglin continues, voice raising. “Then you just shake your head and say ‘what a damn pity’. Cause it ain’t your fault, is it? You ain’t never to blame.”

Stakar clears his throat. “Careful, boy.”

“I ain't no boy! Just – it ain’t that easy to make someone forgive ya, is all, sir.” 

 

 

He’s breathing heavily. Stakar doesn’t think he’s ever heard him say so much in one go. There’s a flush on his cheeks that would be mighty pretty if it weren’t for his ragged stubble. 

Stakar weighs his next words carefully. “Sometimes it is,” he says. “And I reckon that scares you, boy. That scares you more than anything.”

The topper-most of Kraglin’s masks falls away. He looks at Stakar with unfettered loathing. But beneath that, there's something else – something Stakar knows all too well. The proof that he's right, that his words have struck home. 

So why doesn't it feel like a victory, as Kraglin folds his thin lips over his teeth and stalks away, pushing the hover-trolley through the dismal corridor, deeper into the _Quadrant’s_ core?

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Spending time with Yondu ought to be easier. But 'ought to' means very little in the greater scheme of things. In fact, Stakar is starting to suspect that the universe takes 'ought to' as a challenge.

Kraglin kept his promise, at least. He woke Yondu up rather than snuggling down beside him, leaving Stakar to man his shift alone. Nevertheless, Yondu's bleary about the eyes by the time he trudges onto the Bridge. Looks like he didn’t swing by the mess hall for a shot of morning caff.

 

 

Course, Stakar never used to let him drink the stuff. Kid was hyper at the best of times; he didn’t need chemical help on his mission to distract Stakar from the dull necessities of Ravager bureaucracy. But right now, Yondu looks like he could use a pick-me-up. Possibly with the aid of a medical hoist.

Stakar stands facing the jump portal, at-ease with his hands behind his back. The washy blue blob reflected in the window splits around a sharp-toothed yawn.

 

 

“Morning,” Stakar says.

Yondu only needs to parrot Stakar's greeting back at him. But for whatever reason – his brain is churning on slow, or else the sound of Stakar's voice is still unexpected enough that it throws him for a loop – he takes his sweet jolly time about it.

“Hi,” he mutters at long last.

 

 

He veers away from the observation platform, loitering by the monitors in the corner. They blip and bloop, sputtering holograms as the portal grows and grows.

Light floods the Bridge. The portal marks a gash in space-time, through which Stakar can see the familiar scattergram of stars around Knowhere, warped as if they've been wrapped around a giant ball. It's the sort of view that would captivate any novice – but Stakar and Yondu are anything but. Stakar refuses to feign space-hypnosis just to get out of a conversation.

 

 

“Which of those consoles need replacing?” he asks, stepping off the dais.

“None of 'em.”

Stakar pauses a half-pace behind him, close enough to feel his body heat. “Yondu, that one's _gurgling._ ”

Yondu remains turned away. “So?”

“So, plasma-powered electronics aren't supposed to _gurgle._ ”

Yondu scowls – Stakar can tell because of the crinkles around his ears. He flicks the kill switch. The hologram dies and takes the gurgle with it.

“There.”

 

 

His _happy now?_ remains unspoken. It wouldn't have done thirty years ago, but thinking about everything that's changed will only lead to spiralling misery, that sense that Stakar has _lost_ something, and more wretched nights spent alone with his hand.

 

 

“No, you just _turned it off._ That's not fixing the problem, Yondu.”

Like how ignoring the stains of your late crewmen doesn't make them go away. This is all getting a bit ridiculous. Stakar is an Admiral, yet he feels like he's scolding a child for not tidying their room. _Yondu should know better._

 

 

Time to cut to the chase.

 

 

“Why didn't you clean them up?” he asks. “Your old crew?” Then, when Yondu's silence only grew stodgier, thickening like nutri-porridge on the boil: “Come on, Yondu. This is a recruitment drive. You're trying to convince me that you're ready for this, fit to be a captain again. And right now...”

“You ain't convinced.”

Stakar isn't going to lie to flatter his vanities. “No. I'm not. You know the first rule of a con, Yondu.”

Yondu has yet to turn around and face him. He directs his confirmation to the dodgy scanning console, hands shaking as he unhooks the side panel in search of that culprit bloop. “Play the part.”

“That's right. So play it.” Stakar doesn't want this to be a beat down. Every confrontation with Yondu has felt like that so far, and it leaves his guts knotted all the way up to his throat. So he drops his hand on Yondu's shoulder, suffering the constrained flinch. “I expect better from you, you know.”

 

 

Yondu sucks a sharp breath. He releases it soon after – for which Stakar's nose isn't grateful. “Yeah,” he mutters, and while he's agreeing with what Stakar says, Stakar still doesn't feel like he's won. He hasn't felt that way in quite some time.

“Go shower,” he tells him. “Eat something. Clean your teeth.” Please, for the love of the stars. He can still taste that last kiss. “We put more wash-out in the dispenser when we gave you a restock.”

He just hopes the undercaptains didn’t conspire to replace it with lye. No – they wouldn't try anything so obvious. But if Yondu wants to convince Stakar’s men that he’s worthy of a seat at the table, he needs a new crew. And if he wants to convince a rowdy bunch of miners that he can offer them a better life, he shouldn't smell more like Knowhere's garbage pits than they do.

 

 

Young-Yondu – _his_ Yondu, insists a private corner of Stakar's mind – would've laughed in his face. For the first year he rejected every order he was given. Acting out, just to prove that he could. Freedom, in his mind, translated into _disobedience._

But gradually, as he realized Stakar wasn’t going to whip him bloody, he calmed. Stakar never took the physical route with him, not outside of training in the ring. Wouldn’t work anyway. That was what Yondu expected. He knew how to handle abuse, knew how to suck on pain and turn it into hate.

 

 

So, Stakar used alternative tactics.

 

 

When Yondu acted up, he denied him active duty. If Yondu kept acting up, Stakar piled on the mind-numbing tasks: careening and loot-tallies and endless reams of stock check lists, to be scrolled through on a palm-held datadot and ticked off one by one.

When Yondu finished a chore, bitching and griping the whole way, Stakar was sure to reward him. Yondu couldn’t steal his own trinkets when he was confined to the _Starhawk,_ but whenever Stakar pressed a shiny new toy into his hands, Yondu’s scowl lightened, just a little, and he behaved better for a day, a week, a year.

 

 

That’s all old history. This Yondu just nods and does as he’s told.

 

 

Stakar steps aside to let him pass. He takes point before the consoles, and watches the portal distend around the _Quadrant_ like a bot's lips mid-fellatio.

There's always this moment when you think the bubble’s going to burst, when reality stretches paper-thin and you see the space ahead of you fluctuate as if an incalculable quantity of universes are all overlaid. They are, of course. This is the point where one in a million jumps fail and you, ship and crew all go crashing through to Sakaar, another lost soul, castaway on the great tide of life.

Stakar hopes that isn’t where today takes them. He already has to face one loopy Ancient. An audience with Tivvan and En Dwi in the same cycle sounds like his own private circle in Malekith’s hell.

 

 

But then they’re through. They jolt between two planes of space.

Stakar shuts his eyes. It's easier that way, as every atom in his body compresses and abruptly inflates again. He grips the console, rides out the buffet, and performs a quick check to ensure he has the right number of fingers and toes.

Yondu isn’t quite so graceful. The Bridge has an adjoining shower block. It’s nothing fancy – Stakar ducked his head in before Yondu arrived – but at least it’s _functional._ It’s designed to be used on those long hunts when cap’n and ranking men eat, drink and sleep at their stations: one open drain that leads straight to the matter converter and a rusty spigot overhead. The lack of luxury also means a lack of hand-holds.

 

 

“You alright?”

“Fuckin’ – fell on my fuckin’ ass!”

He sounds so _offended_ about it. Stakar practices his poker face.

“Did your ass deserve it?”

“ _Fucker,_ ” Yondu says, and for a moment it’s like they’ve turned back time. Stakar can see it play out before him. The door slams open and a naked Centaurian slams out, toned and pretty, with pierced little tits that Stakar wants to latch onto and _bite._

 

 

Reality doesn’t live up to his expectations. When Yondu emerges, he doesn’t grab Stakar’s dick, scratch ugly claws down his back, wrap legs around his Admiral’s waist like he never wants to let go. If he tried, he’d dislocate something. Most likely his own hips.

The joy of a space-shower is that it doesn’t leave you dripping. Wash-out is a dry powder that you rub over your skin, wadding into a ball. It gathers a decent portion of dead skin, grease, and generic dirt. If it were up to Stakar he’d dump Yondu in a vat of the stuff – maybe Obfonteri too; he swears he saw lice cases in his beard. But it isn’t up to him, and at the very least, Yondu’s skin now looks the electric-blue Stakar remembers, rather than the color of dirty dish-water.

 

 

Hm. That’s quite a lot of skin. Not as much as in his fantasies, but. Well.

 

 

Stakar pretends to examine the verdigris on the copper pipes, scratching the teal blossoms with his nail.

Yondu wrestles his shirt down the rest of the way. He emerges from the neckhole, still muttering cusses under his breath, and tosses his ball of snotty wash-dust at the nearest waste shaft. Must’ve been too big to cram down the drain.

“Well,” he says, waddling to Stakar. He rubs ruefully at his tailbone, before smacking his chest and standing to a slapshod attention. “What’chu think?”

 

 

Stakar thinks that’s a smart mouth he’d quite like to kiss.

 

 

“You clean your teeth?” he asks, just to be sure. Yondu scrunches his nose but when Stakar cocks an eyebrow, he sticks out a tongue free of white fuzz.

“Wash-out still tastes shit. You’d think they’d make it in flavors already.”

“Princess,” says Stakar fondly.

 

 

They realize what he’s said at the same time. _Princess._

 

 

It’s stupid. Yondu’s anything but. He wears masculinity like a shield, and he’ll squat in worse squalor than the rest of them without a single complaint. Makes sense, as he spent his formative years being ferried between a cage and the gun casement on a warship, hosed down only when he put his overseers off their lunch.

But every now and then, he gets prissy over the weirdest things. Like when folks mess with his trinket collection or blow on his implant or try to correct his battle plans because _yes, you might have a whistle-controlled arrow, but the rest of your team doesn’t, and it’d be real nice if you weren’t the sole survivor this time, hmm?_

 

 

Princess it is.

 

 

Stakar got punched the first time he called him that. That would’ve been enough to make him stop if Yondu hadn’t turned such a pretty navy and demanded he do it again.

 

 

Yondu swallows. He licks his lips. It isn’t one of his old salacious come-ons, looking Stakar dead in the eye and purring _make me,_ but hey. Near enough.

Stakar steps closer. Hunger twists in his abdomen, his balls, his heavy cock.

 

 

“Stakar.”

 

 

Stars. He sounds raw. Like he’s been throat-fucked already.

Blood throbs in Stakar’s ears. His breath pulls faster, hotter, heavier, electric crackling through his arcs.

He _wants._

 

 

Yondu’s so close, and Yondu’s clean – or at least, as clean as he gets – and Yondu’s pupils are so wide Stakar can see himself in them like he’s been split and swallowed by dual black holes...

He catches Yondu’s hip like he’s stopping him from running. He doesn’t need to. Today, at long last, Yondu stands his ground.

 

 

He looks at Stakar on the level. They're still matched in height, weight, everything. His hip fits Stakar’s hand. The paunch beyond it brushes his thumb in time with Yondu’s shaky inhale.

 

 

“Stakar…”

 

 

Stakar holds Yondu’s nape. He grips him there, one hand on his hip and the other on his neck, tipping Yondu in until his breath dances over parted blue lips. Yondu follows him, trusting and just a little trembly as Stakar moves closer and closer still, slow enough to let him pull back.

He doesn’t.

Their lips mash soft, crushing dry against each other. But then Stakar digs his thumb a little harder into the tender line between Yondu’s thigh and his torso, and Yondu gasps enough to let his tongue slide through.

 

 

He’s sharp and sour and silky warm. His jagged teeth prickle but he doesn’t bite, even as Stakar traces their tongues together, licking into the taste of bitter wash-dust so he has to suffer it too.

This close, their chests rest against each other, bellies too. They can map each other, all those places where they’re soft and firm.

 

 

One place is very firm indeed. Stakar chuckles, breaking apart from Yondu, though the hand on his neck keeps him close.

 

 

“Cum here often?” he asks, nudging them together. Yondu _shivers,_ eyes flashing wild.

Ah. _There_ he is, the ferocious little brat who was the bane of Stakar’s days and the joys of them too.

“Only when Krags is in a fun mood.”

“Mm. Think we should change that?”

The quiver starts at the top of Yondu’s spine, spreading down and out to the ass under Stakar's hands. His legs part to make way for his with a desperation that’s almost as endearing as it’s needy. “ _Yeah._ Stakar, fuck...”

“S’okay. I got you.”

 

 

Yondu’s navy to the tips of his ears. “Leakin’ through my pants,” he whispers like he doesn’t know whether he should be mortified or turned on.

 

 

_Fuck._

Stakar groans. He pulls away from Yondu, just as shaky, just as starving for it, digging a hand between his thighs before he can demand more kisses, and…

“Fuck, I can feel it.”

 

 

Moisture, tipping his fingers. Beyond it, heat. Pulsing wet and warm, greedy as the rest of him.

Took Yondu a long time to let Stakar play with that part of himself, to be sure Stakar didn't think it made him  _lesser_ or  _weak._ Years, in fact. Stakar doesn't know what sort of shitty sex-ed Kree slaves got, but it was obviously enough to make Yondu formulate a bunch of dumb ideas about manhood and womanhood and the divisions between the two. Things that needed to be unlearned carefully - under Stakar's guidance, of course.

He wonders if Yondu lets Kraglin touch his cunt. If all those careful moments shared between the two of them, Stakar never pushing more than he thought Yondu could handle, have made Yondu comfortable enough that he'll spread his little pussy for anyone who asks. But that's a dark thought, a cold thought, and Stakar stomps it down to the back of his head.

Not now.

 

 

“I can feel _you._ Stars, Yondu.” 

He rubs _up_. Yondu’s cock nestles on the heel of his palm, so Stakar grinds at it while he probes roughly beneath.

 

 

Yondu _whines._ He grabs onto Stakar, arms wrapped around his neck. He digs spiky teeth into his shoulder, so hard that the imprints will dent the leather for weeks to come, and rolls down, sat on his hand, grinding like he can wear through the leather between them.

Ravager garb is usually watertight – useful when stomping about in sewers. But Yondu’s is as old and age-worn as he is, bending too easily to where Stakar wants it. His slick, still hot from his puss, seeps through the seam and smears over Stakar’s palm.

 

 

Stakar’s head swims. He feels like a randy juvenile again, like he wants to go down on his knees and eat Yondu out until he’s sobbing for more, kiss his ass and suck his cock and do a million depraved things at once.

One thing’s for sure. If this progresses much further, neither of them will stay standing.

He walks Yondu backwards – Yondu rolling his hips, thighs a sweaty clutch around his wrist. His back hits the wall, a rare patch not bulked out by a console. Several pipes snake across it – Yondu’s implant bashes off one, loud as a gong. Stakar winces for him, managing a gasp of ‘sorry’ before Yondu pulls him in and kisses him like he’s feeding him air.

 

 

Stakar sure feels like he’s drowning. He locates a twitching thigh and traps it between his own, rubbing Yondu’s crotch in what he hopes is a demonstrative manner.

They may not have done this in forever and a day (thirty-two years, give or take one lost to moonshine at the start) but Yondu still gets his cues. The leg between Stakar’s hitches up, and Stakar cants _forwards._

 

 

Yes. _There_. He can rub himself off while he traces Yondu’s cock through the slippery leather, smell his sweat and his breath, convince himself it’s all gonna be okay.

 

 

Yondu’s perfect like this. He swivels against Stakar's hand, all the while staring up at him with those big baffled eyes like he can hardly believe Stakar’s real. Stakar strokes his dick again and again, tickling his clit with the tip of a finger, and Yondu forgets his attempts to frot Stakar into an early grave.

He _moans,_ lascivious and wet. Stakar licks sweat off his neck, kissing the patch behind his ear that melts him to mush. Yondu's spine cranks tight and he cums – just like that – with the prettiest damn whimper Stakar’s ever heard.

 

 

Stakar isn’t having such a great time. The leg has stopped, and Yondu’s dry wash ball evidently didn’t make it all the way under his earlobes. But he bites until blood's all he tastes and growls “Good, princess, that’s it, you let me take care of you”.

It’s so easy, so wondrously easy. Stakar can’t think why they didn’t do this a week ago.

 

 

Yondu’s eyelids droop. He hits _that_ perfect spot, the one he claims is sweeter than orgasm, and Stakar knows he’ll do anything he says.

 

 

Yondu has a strange relationship with submission. He wants to be in control but at the same time much prefers being out of it. What that might mean, when viewed in conjunction with Yondu’s past, Stakar doesn’t like to delve into. Certainly, the one time he tried to bring it up, the kid hopped in an M-ship and took off with Aleta’s crew for a whole Lunar cycle.

But they haven’t set any parameters on this. Stakar’s not stupid enough to assume they can just fall back onto the safewords and hard limits of three decades prior.

He doesn’t push. Doesn’t order his old friend to get onto his knees, although he knows that he would drop in a heartbeat. Stakar just reaches into his fly and jerks himself with all the pent-up frustration from his last failed attempt.

 

 

Fuck. Yondu looks better than any whore. He lolls against the wall, boneless and panting, saliva threading his beard. Stakar has to return the earlier favor, pushing a leg between his to hold him up. That leaves Yondu twitching, over-sensitized, scrunching his cute blue button of a nose.

Damn good look on him.

 

 

Stakar leans forwards, boxes him in. His solar arcs spark and his spare hand hits the wall behind Yondu’s head, and he pulls rough enough that he’ll regret it in the morning, calluses stinging like the afterburn of a good whisky.

He watches him, watches him the whole way until he simply can’t keep his eyes open. Stakar spills in a liquid haze of Yondu’s name.

 

 

Reality trickles back. Slow, sluggish, inexorable.

 

 

Stakar doesn’t want it. He’d much rather stay here in this sticky slice of sweetness, nose buried in the crook of Yondu’s neck and ragged breath breaking over that bite. But he’s never been a guy who shies away from doing what needs to be done.

As he disentangles himself, petting gruffly up Yondu’s side and unwinding him when he clings, he notices the chronometer. Five hours left on their shift, and another six shifts before Knowhere splats across their radars like a shiny-studded turd.

 

 

Fucking Yondu will certainly make the time pass faster. But there’s another man to concern himself with, one who snores in the cabin one door down.

As much as Stakar would enjoy flaunting this, standing on deck and ordering Yondu to suck him while Obfonteri champs his molars in the corner, some fantasies are meant to stay as that. The solar wings make him fast, not plasma-proof. If Obfonteri ambushes him when he isn’t expecting it, he could get in a lucky shot. Then it’s goodbye admiralty, goodbye Ravagers. Hello feeding tubes and bedpans and a mercy kill.

 

 

“I think,” he tells Yondu, who’s drizzling slowly back into his head, pulling faces and rubbing at the sticky patch inside his pants, “we ought to keep this to ourselves.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TWO PEOPLE ARE READING THIS FIC AND I LOVE YOU BOtH**


	5. in some perfumes there is more delight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Short chapter - mostly character exploration!**

Yondu tells him what he thinks about that plan, and he doesn’t pull his punches.

“Kraglin’s a big boy,” he insists. “We ain’t never made no matelotage vows. Fucked plenty of bots on the side, the both of us did, along with every pretty bit of skin what flashed our way. Ain’t no biggie.”

 

 

But it _is_ a biggie. Even when you’re open about such things, there are usually one or two people who you’d really rather your partner didn’t hop in the sack with. Judging by Obfonteri’s glacial reception, Stakar is on his list.

 

 

“Only reason he don’t like you,” Yondu continues, heading towards the observation glass. He walks bow-legged, but that’s because of the crust in his pants. Nowadays if they bang each other so hard they can't walk, they won’t recover without physiotherapy. “Is because he reckons you’re gonna boot me out again, soon as I step outta line.”

He pauses there, like he’s waiting for Stakar to deny it. Stakar wishes he could.

Yondu gulps, scowls, carries on. “Thinks you only took me back because you thought I was dead. Wouldna showed up otherwise. He's just lookin’ out for me, is all – y'know, like mates’re supposed to.”

 

 

Stakar doubts that’s the extent of Obfonteri’s issues with him, but that isn’t what this conversation is about. Not really.

“Yondu,” he says warmly.

Yondu stays facing away. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re not dead.” That at least, he can guarantee.

Yes, it would be _easier_ if he just had to burn a body and mutter some nice words to a glowing cloud of ash. Stakar acknowledges that, in the same way he acknowledges that collateral damage is a necessary part of the take-what-you-want, with-plasma-bolts-if-necessary lifestyle. Like he acknowledges that Yondu brought about the deaths of a hundred innocent children, whether knowingly or otherwise. That’s a truth he has to stomach every time he dreams of licking smooth blue skin.

 

 

But beneath all that, a selfish fragment worms through his conscience. _Thank fuck he went into space without that suit. It’s the only thing that brought him back to me._

Yondu didn’t do it for him though. Yondu did it for a Terran kid called Peter Quill who Stakar hasn’t made anywhere near as much effort to get to know as he should.

Part of that is fear – Stakar's man enough to admit it. Who knows what poison Yondu filled his ears with when he grew up? He could’ve made Stakar a monster, a demon, someone to hate.

Or worse – he might not have mentioned him at all.

 

 

“Everyone is,” Stakar continues. “Especially your son.”

Yondu doesn’t deny it. He scratches his crotch, showing off his canines. “Stupid fuckin’ sentiment. Boy ain’t done nothin’ but traitor me, an’ I still want him back.”

 

 

For all that Yondu claims Stakar doesn't know what he's going through, Stakar still thinks he might empathize.

 

 

He follows Yondu to the observation glass. Being as he caught the majority of his leavings one-handed – his fingers still stick together, even after rinsing under the spigot – he doesn't have slimy pants to deal with. Yondu’s will need scrubbing, preferably before flies start buzzing around his groin. But Stakar should at least give Yondu the chance to deal with it himself before he starts nagging.

They stand there, side by side. Yondu looks at the stars and Stakar looks at Yondu.

 

 

“He'll come back,” he says.

Yondu shifts from foot to foot. “Yeah. Always comes crawlin' home to daddy. Just...”

“Things're gonna be different?”

“Yeah.”

Stakar sighs. “He still cares for you,” he tells Yondu. “No matter what. And you still care for him. You taught him how to survive, taught him everything he knows.”

Yondu snorts. “Fucked up every step of the way.”

 

 

It would be easy to internalize that blame. After all, Yondu taught Peter but Stakar taught Yondu, which means any deficiencies in Yondu's parenting ability ultimately come from him. But Stakar isn’t at fault here. He's not narcissistic enough to think you can undo twenty years' slavery with a dash of kindness and some mind-blowing sex.

That's the thing about damage. You can paste in the cracks, painstakingly repaint and reglaze until it looks good as new. But the crack will remain, a fault beneath the surface, forever etched under your skin.

 

 

“Peter Quill,” he says, “is a good person. You haven’t done badly.”

Yondu shakes his head, like he's been waiting for someone to try that one. Like he's run this same argument through his head a thousand times. “That ain't on me. That's on his mama. Boy talks about her like she's the flarkin’ Ashk'far messiah.” He fiddles with the console to his left, dulling the reflectivity index of the glass so that he doesn’t have to see his frown-lines. “I just added the grimy bits round the edges. Taught him to steal, shoot, kill.”

“Damn fine lessons,” Stakar says. He's not sure where Yondu's coming from. “And judging by his rep, it's not like he doesn't enjoy it.” While the Guardians' official records were expunged after their heroics on Xandar, more than a few bounties are attached to Quill's name, mostly involving missing artefacts and illegally manipulated Duchesses.

Yondu shrugs. He picks at the itchy seam of his pants. “Smacked him about whenever he didn't listen.” He says it quiet, like a confession. “Knew it weren't right, even then.”

 

 

_Like you knew old gods don't just ask for children, unless they have something nasty planned?_

Yondu wasn't stupid, after all. Not unless it suited him.

Stakar didn't say that. He let Yondu talk.

 

 

“But with my crew breathin' down my neck, yakkin' 'bout takin' matters into their own hands if I ever went soft on him...”

Stakar thinks of the undercaptains, their mutters and their sidelong looks. “You felt like you didn’t have a choice.”

“S'all so easy, lookin' back. Coulda told the lot of 'em to fuck off, taken the brat and made my own way.” Yondu doesn’t acknowledge the hand that squeezes his shoulder, but he doesn’t buck it off either. “Settled down on a neutral satellite, bought an agri-dome, set up shop.”

Stakar tries to imagine Yondu as a bio-farmer, living the quiet life with kid in tow, recycling their own shit into compost. “Wouldn't suit you.”

“Nah. But I shoulda tried.” Yondu sighs. “Would do, if I could do it all again.”

 

 

That's very easy to say in hindsight. Stakar can think of plenty he'd do differently too. Not because he _regrets_ his choices regarding the banishment; oh no. Stakar's thinking back, back, earlier than that, to the clumsy crush of a mouth on his in a bot-brothel and the year that came before.

He shouldn't have let Yondu run amok. Soon as the collar came off his neck and the yaka arrow flew, Stakar deemed Yondu able to defend himself and unleashed him on the galaxy. He thought it was the decent thing to do. The kid gorged himself on freedom, throwing himself into every choice he could, wise and poor alike, for the sheer joy of making it. Stakar let him run long-leash, reeling him only when he strayed too close to a sun and threatened to go down in flames.

 

 

Perhaps if he'd steered a little more, dug in his rudder outside the bedroom as well as in it, things wouldn't have turned out the way they did.

 

 

“You can work on bonds,” he tells Yondu, brushing his thumb up and down the outside of his duster’s fluffy collar. He doesn't try to touch his neck – certainly doesn't try to initiate anything more. One per day is a noble target for a man of his years. “If it's something you both want, that is.”

Yondu's head droops. “Yeah.”

 

 

He sounds more defeated than ever. Stakar frowns. “You don't think Quill wants that?”

“He left, didn't he?”

“People leave for different reasons."

“Mm-hm. Kept goin' on about _this bein' nice an' all, but I need my indy-pendence._ ” Yondu's impression of the kid wouldn't be half-bad if he didn't drop so many consonants. “Thas why he fucked off first time too. Said it weren’t nothin’ in particular I did – just got sick of his old man crampin' his style.”

 

 

He sounds kinda miffed at the thought. Stakar smothers a laugh. Dammit – that post-coital fuzz must be lingering. He's not usually this jocular, but something about having Yondu nearby, about having a proper conversation with him, makes happiness fizz in his belly, warmer than alcohol, sweeter than sex.

“He's an adult,” he tells Yondu. “You can't have been such a shit father, if he stayed as long as he did.”

Yondu's got that set to his jaw that means he'd be worrying his lip if Stakar weren't here to see it. “But if it ain't somethin' I did, how the hell'm I supposed to fix it?”

 

 

Stakar thinks of Aleta jetting off into the night like a shooting star, speeding too fast and blazing too bright to catch.

 _Not one of your hawks,_ she'd hissed the night before. Clawing bloody scratches down his back as she sank onto him, rode him so fierce he was the one who staggered out like he’d been used. _Don’t you put me in a cage._

 

 

At the end of the cycle, you can't make anyone be who you want them to be. And you can love someone to death, but still hate them, just a little, underneath.

 

 

Yondu doesn't have much left to say. Stakar fills the silence. “All fledglings fly the nest.”

Yondu rolls his eyes. “You and yer fuckin' birds…”

Stakar smiles. “You should come meet the new girls sometime.”

“Pass. Last lot tried to pluck my eyes out.”

“They were just being friendly.”

“Well, them's some friends I could live without."

 

 

Stakar squeezes his shoulder, loving the warm thickness of it, the way it fills his palm. Yondu's short on allies at the moment; whatever he might say, he needs all the friends he can get.

"Everyone needs to make their own way," he says, steering them back to the topic at hand. "Sometimes they decide it's not for them. Sometimes they come back.”

Like Martinex, captain of his own clan for all of a year before he awkwardly offered to merge it back into Stakar's. Kid's a damn fine lieutenant, but he doesn't suit leadership and neither he nor Stakar think any less of him for not wanting to light his own way. Aleta doesn't agree, but she takes pride in questioning his judgment. Stakar mostly lets her get on with it, nowadays.

“Sometimes they don't,” Yondu fills in.

“But,” Stakar continues, “that doesn't mean he has to cut ties.” His hand slips from Yondu's coat to fall back by his side. “Things might've been similar between you and me.”

 

 

This time, the silence isn't so much stodgy as shocked. Yondu blinks at him.

“What?”

 

 

Stakar hastens to explain himself. “If I'd kept better track of your jobs. If I'd treated you like the other junior captains – watched over you, made you run every decision by me five times before I okayed deployment...” _If you hadn’t dealt in children._ "You might well have taken the same route as Peter, eventually. You can only be guided so long, learn so much, before it starts to suffocate you.”

The pause stretches longer this time.

 

 

“Are you,” says Yondu slowly, like he's trying to make sense of this tack they've taken, “comparin' me and you, to me and my kid? _Again_?”

Stakar frowns. “It's just an analogy.”

Yondu turns away, pinching between his eyebrows. “ _Stars.”_

Stakar follows him. “I'm sorry. I'm not sure I understand the issue?”

“Yer sayin' we're like me and my boy.”

“Yes?” It's an obvious parallelism. They're both trying to reconnect. They've both pushed away someone they love.

“While my pants're full of jizz.”

“I honesly didn't think that would be a problem for you.”

“ _Jizz,_ Stakar.”

 

 

That aggrieved voice is the last straw. Stakar laughs. He slaps Yondu on the back, then wraps an arm around him, dragging him in so their temples bump.

“Princess,” he says, just to watch that lovely shiver flow through down Yondu’s spine. “Go on. Clean up.”

Yondu pulls away from him, grumbling something about only needing one wash-dust bath a week before Stakar came calling. And Stakar lets him go, because like Aleta, like Peter, he knows that sooner or later, he’ll be back.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Every reconciliation has a honeymoon period. Yondu’s and Stakar’s lasts three hours.

Its terminus begins when Stakar nods to Yondu, sprawled with feline liquidity over his chair, and heads to wake Obfonteri.

 

 

There’s a spring in his step. As much a spring as you can manage when you’re creeping up on your first centenary. Arcturans age slower than Xandarians – slower than Centaurians as well, although not by much. Who knows? In a few years, Yondu might catch him up.

Nothing can bring him down – not thoughts of age, not thoughts of the past, not frets about the future. He’s on top of the universe.

He raps on the captain’s doorjamb, right beside the mic, shifting to one side so he won’t be blocking Obfonteri when the door gushes open. A vacuum seal wraps the door. It has the dual purpose of protecting the occupants from any breaches near the Bridge and preventing passing crew from eavesdropping on their captain hollering as he’s railed.

 

 

It’s hard to imagine Obfonteri doing much railing. He’s lanky as a stretched elastic band. When he answers the door he’s hunched and half-asleep, posture so awful Stakar’s back aches just from looking at him. When he realizes who it is, though, he tenses until he looks like he’s about to snap.

“Admiral,” he says, with a chest thump that could be mistaken for a scratch of his armpit.

“Morning.” Stakar rises above Obfonteri’s attitude. If the man wants to be ornery, that’s his own problem. Stakar could discipline him for disrespect, but he doesn’t like to dish out penal duties behind a captain’s back. “Course is true,” he says. “Jump went fine. Just a case of minding the monitors from here to Knowhere.”

 

 

Obfonteri doesn’t have many memorable features, but his nose is quite a honker. The nostrils flare and thin, and something shutters in his already closed-off expression. He straightens his shoulders, zipping his saggy, sleep-crumpled jumpsuit up to the chin.

“You enjoy your shift, sir?”

 

 

Stakar didn’t expect him to care. But he’s glad Obfonteri isn’t letting this non-existent rivalry come between them. He might not be a fan of small-talk, but he recognizes it for what it is – a social lubricant that can ease the way when two people with a healthy mutual disdain have to work in close quarters.

“I sure did.”

“S’nice, sir. Anything fun happen?”

 

 

Obfonteri’s watching him far too closely. His nostrils flex again, like those of the seals who galumphed out the water around the rocky Arcturan coast, eight tons of blubber and tusk. Obfonteri doesn’t have any of their heft. But what he lacks in muscle, he makes up for with his eyes – gray, cold, the color of gun-metal and storms at sea.

Hell. He’s Hraxian. Which means: spindly limbs, two rows of teeth, and one impeccable sense of smell. He could give the sniffer-worms who check cargo holds for contraband at the Shi’ar stockade a run for their money.

 

 

Of course he can smell Yondu’s slick on Stakar's hand.

 

 

Stakar grits his teeth. “Talk to your captain,” he says, cool as dead space.

Obfonteri struggles to match his composure. For a minute, Stakar’s sure he’s due a fist in his face. It doesn’t arrive. Obfonteri twists the lid down on his temper. He stands before him, sickly-thin and pallid, and thumps his chest twice.

“Permission to be dismissed, sir?”

 

 

Shit. Stakar hasn’t heard a tone that icy since the time Aleta blew engines over Hoth and waited until she lost three toes to frostbite before calling for an assist. He nods Kraglin away. He lopes past him, and Stakar catches the glint of his second row of fangs, pushing through the divots in his gum.

Yondu’s due a bollocking. Stakar reckons he deserves it.

 

 

He trudges to Tullk’s cabin. He opens the door, goes inside, and puts his head down to sleep.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

He’s half-way through a dream involving his hawks performing an aerial ballet to Peter Quill’s music – he can’t put a name to any of the tunes, and he only heard them a couple of times, but damn if that one about the tiger’s eye doesn’t stick in his head. The knock jerks him awake. Three of them: thud, thud, thud.

Have eight hours really passed already? Stakar checks his chronometer and discovers they have.

Maybe he doesn’t adapt to the three-shift cycle as easily as he used to, after all. He’s gotten too comfortable in his post as Admiral, lying in bed after burning midnight oil and delegating swab-duties to his underlings.

 

 

None of that here. The memory of scrubbing caked blood from metal tiling ingrains itself in Stakar’s back muscle, and his roll upright is far slower than it should be.

He makes it, not without a lot of internal cussing and some worrying clicks. “Mic activate. I’m coming, already.”

 

 

Yondu doesn’t snigger, make it a dirty joke. Stakar tries not to be too disappointed.

 

 

When he reaches the door he finds Yondu propped against it. Thankfully, he’s got a shoulder wedged against the jamb so he doesn’t fall through into Stakar’s arms. That would be fun in theory, but Stakar doesn’t need to add a slipped disc to his problems.

“Morning,” he says, then shakes his head. “I mean, night.” Triple shifts get confusing like that. “How’s Obfonteri?”

Yondu’s grim expression tells him all he needs to know.

 

 

 _Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you fucked him,_ whispers the quiet little conscience Stakar cultivates like a mushroom in the lightless part of his mind. He squelches it with a vicious _maybe Yondu should’ve thought of this before he said yes_ and leaves it there to rot.

 

 

“Think he’s mad enough to yell at me?” He’s looking to lighten the tone, and Yondu snorts, but it doesn’t sound all that humorous.

“Kraglin don’t yell. ‘Specially not since what happened last time.”

What was it Obfonteri told Stakar about forgiveness? _It’s not that easy?_ Maybe it is in Yondu’s head, who will hold a petty grudge until the day he dies but would jump into space in an instant for anyone he loved. Obfonteri’s obviously just having a harder time forgiving himself.

Maybe Stakar should talk to him about that.

 

 

“Yelling might do him good,” he says. Yondu shakes his head.

“Don’t you goad him into nothin’ just so’s you can punish him.”

“I wouldn’t.” Not unless Obfonteri _really_ irks him.

 

 

It goes to show how long they’ve been apart and how vast the gap between them still is, that Yondu doesn’t trust him to keep his word. He eyeballs Stakar a moment, like he’s trying to see through clouded glass.

Stakar understands. His crass comments about Obfonteri were the first to make Yondu man up, look him in the eye, and tell him straight to his face he was wrong. First Officer has the Captain’s back. Same goes in reverse.

 

 

“Maybe I oughta take this shift too,” Yondu says. But every minute they waste is eating into his allotted sleep cycle. It shows.

As does the bite Stakar left on his neck.

Stakar motions to it. The imprint of his teeth stands out dark against Yondu’s bright skin. One ring only, all blunt-edged bar the canines. Nothing like a Hraxian’s fangs.

Yondu claps a hand over them, scowling. He tugs up his scarf, rearranging until he deems himself decent. “Damn.”

Stakar manages a grin. “Go on. Get to bed. I’ll behave.” Yondu will be more hindrance than help, sitting there and flaunting the marks Stakar left on him while he and Obfonteri have their talk.

 

 

He guides Yondu to his door with a wholly unnecessary touch to his waist. He doesn’t bother asking for a goodnight kiss, not when Yondu’s got that tension to him again that means he doesn’t want to say _no_ but wishes he did. Then he shuffles his jacket more squarely over his shoulders and heads to face the music.

He doesn’t know what to prepare for, do he decides to expect anything and everything – plasma bolts, Honor Challenges, an angry Hraxian chomping at his windpipe. As a result, the clash with Obfonteri turns out to be something of an anti-climax.

 

 

This is mostly due to the fact that Obfonteri isn’t there.

Stakar walks around the vacated Bridge, unsure whether he’s more ticked off or amused. He even checks the vents, where a lanky stick-insect of a low-gravver might cram themselves, a knife clutched in each vengeful paw.

 

 

Nothing.

 

 

Yondu didn’t say anything about Obfonteri assigning himself gunnery duty. Obfonteri must’ve taken matters into his own hands as soon as the shifts changed. Half of Stakar is of a mind to hunt him down, force a confrontation. The other half reminds him of Yondu’s request that he doesn’t let Kraglin do anything he’ll regret.

Yondu cares for the scrawny fool. That goes without saying. They’ve suffered hardship, living as scavengers and starwaymen, stripping down dead ships for salvage and harvesting power from the engines of any cruise ship that’s slow enough for them to catch. That sort of grit makes men stick together. But when the rough road has been traversed, when the choppy seas and high solar-winds and quantum meteorite storms are behind them, will those same men stay?

Yondu’s lived more than half his life with a handful of people he trusts. Obfonteri, Quill, Tullk. Select other members of his command crew. Quill’s already gone, and with Obfonteri’s exception, the rest are dead. After Stakar cast him out, those people found him, and now that they leave him, Stakar returns.

 

 

It’s symmetrical, like poetry.

 

 

A part of him is delighted – wickedly, selfishly so. A bigger, older, wiser part is concerned. Because right now, Yondu’s vulnerable, and at least part of Stakar murmurs for him to use it.

That was what he wanted, right? During the exile – that was why he hounded him, banished his ships from every port.

 

 

Little boys pull little girls’ pigtails in the playground because they want their attention and no one tells them it’s wrong. Stakar _knew_ it was wrong to break Yondu down until he came back begging, cut everyone who cared for him out of his life. But for the longest time after the exile, he wanted to do it anyway. And no matter how often he tells himself that time is past...

 

 

Stakar finishes his circuit of the Bridge. All monitors functional – Obfonteri must’ve fixed the blooper. The needles on the dial-displays hover well within the green zones, and Knowhere crawls closer and closer as the asteroids tinkle off their shields.

Stakar sinks onto the captain’s chair, leaving Obfonteri to his sulking. He props his chin on his hand so he can watch the stars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you all so much for reading/reviewing xx**


	6. music hath a far more pleasing sound

The shift passes uneventfully. Stakar spends most of it on the Bridge, although he does wander up and down the central corridor sometimes, stretching his legs. The hallway curves through the shuttle like a spine with scoliosis, hollow ribs branching to either side.

Kraglin doesn't show his face. That’s a shame. Dislike among professionals is much like an open wound; the longer you leave it, the more it festers, until you finally have to amputate. Far easier to lance the abscess early.

 

 

Time dawdles when you're not having fun. Stakar is awake only for the purpose of staying awake. The monitors tick and flash and flash and tick, and he finds himself blinking in time with them, counting his breaths, three flashes for an inhale and four for an ex.

He only realises the eight hours have crawled by when Yondu pads onto the Bridge behind him, the blue of his face almost glowing against the dull blue-black of space.

Stakar twists on the chair to face him – then remembers that it doesn't belong to him and stands. “Morning.”

 

 

“Morning.”

Yondu evidently has nothing else to add. Stakar doesn't want to pry, but at the same time, his conscience keeps nipping at him, pecking like a hungry hawk.

“How's Obfonteri?” He tries to say it warmly, like he cares.

“Pissed.”

Yondu makes no move to assume the captain's chair, so Stakar, knees creaking, lowers himself back onto it. “You said you didn't swear no matelotage.”

Yondu grunts.

“And that he wouldn't mind.”

“S'right.”

“I think he minds.”

“Hm.”

 

 

He's decided that monosyllables are the way through this conversation. Stakar won't get any more out of him, so he slouches down for another eight hours of watching space and listening for a bloop that never sounds.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It's a relief when Knowhere bumbles onto their screens, a psychedelic riot of color and quasi-noxious gas.

Stakar's sharing shift with Kraglin again. While the guy has deigned to grace him with his presence, he has yet to do more than grumble responses to his questions with such obvious, painful reluctance that Stakar gives up out of pity. He's first to see the rotten skull bob into scanning range. Rather than alerting Stakar though, he moves around him, sliding into one control seat after the next, tip-tapping his long fingers off the console keys. Stakar glances up.

“Huh,” he says, the first words they've exchanged since that agonizing ‘Good morning,’ and ‘Yessir’. “Looks like we made it.”

 

 

Kraglin grunts. Did he pick that up from Yondu, or did Yondu pick it up from him? It's a strange thought, stranger that Stakar doesn't know the answer. Yondu never got properly angry at Stakar before.

Oh, Stakar annoyed him plenty – like when he looked down at the posturing brat and, rather than giving him the licks Yondu was waiting for (quivering, lip jutted out, practically begging for it with those scowling red eyes, as if he  _wanted_  Stakar to hit him so he knew where he stood) dispatched him to the pantry to count protein-wafers for the rest of the cycle. But Yondu'd been just a little bit too in awe of him back then to give him the caveman-communication treatment. Stakar took that for granted.

 

 

He pushes from his chair. “I'll wake Yondu,” he says.

Kraglin’s eyes are livid under their rheumy glaze. “Nah, sir. I got it.”

Stakar can't say he expected much different. “I'm not so old I need you to do my walking for me,” he says – a last vain bid to lighten the atmosphere.

“Yeah,” Kraglin mutters. “You can obviously still get up.”

 

 

He tosses 'sir' over his shoulder as he slouches from the room. Stakar turns back to Knowhere. He sinks into his seat, knees grateful despite his claims to the contrary, and props his chin on his knuckles.

“That man's worse than Aleta,” he tells the nebula. As usual, it doesn't reply.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Recruitment drives used to be one of the many pros of captaincy. Nowadays, along with the rest – complete control, having the final say on decisions, selecting which crew takes which job – it feels more like a burden.

Drinking all night with a prospective batch of rookies? Sure, that sounds fun in  _theory._ But Stakar's centenary creeps closer every day. He wonders if he can collar the barkeep and request that all his drinks be made virgin.

Still, he has to put on his game face, if only to bolster Kraglin and Yondu's.

“C'mon,” he says, leading the way down the boarding ramp. “We've got a long day ahead.”

 

 

The  _Quadrant,_ like the  _Eclector_ before it, is too large to cram into a dock within the Celestial's eye-socket. Ideally, they ought to spacedock and ride an M-ship down to the surface, but Yondu's hangar is woefully bare. They latch onto one of the jaw-ports instead.

Tunnels bore through every cliff-sized tooth, wide enough to fit two seven-by-seven cargo blocks side by side. Electromagnetic coils surround their rim, whining to life at the beep of a proximity alarm. They're designed to lock onto the central airlocks of the mile-tall freighter ships that fly mucus and cerebrospiral fluid to medical black-markets across the galaxy.

 

 

The  _Quadrant_ is a smaller customer – which makes Stakar feel all the more swindled, upon receiving the dockmaster's tariff. Still, at least this way their new crewmates will be able to saunter in and make their way to their new quarters without worrying about a connecting flight. Convincing men to join your crew is considerably harder when they have a cramped atmospheric-exit to look forwards to.

Stakar lopes down the gang ramp. The dockmaster waits for him. A corpulent Sillagorian, his gills flutter like the plastic strips over the vents. Stakar makes a show of counting out the bribe – a hundred gold units for a dock that wasn't even due to be occupied; criminal even by Ravager standards – before slipping the chit-pouch into the man's six-fingered purple hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

The dockmaster grins. His teeth are stained black from chewing  _mela_ sticks. His gill flaps open and close as he tucks the heavy purse under his layers of flourescent orange docker-garb.

“You got twelve dodecas,” he gargles. “Make the most of 'em.”

 

 

Stakar's pride smarts more than his bank account. He has over fifty of those, under numerous aliases. At least one is registered with each major imperial force in the galaxy, plus a few outliers to see him through in the event of a total civilization collapse. It's like that old spacer saying – don't put all your spacesuits in one storage hold.

He nods stiffly to the dockmaster and plants his boots on Knowhere's soil.

 

 

Being an artificial satellite cobbled onto a fossil from the Elder Age, the soil on Knowhere doesn't technically deserve that name. The Celestial's tongue-flesh is so old and worn that it's ossified into bedrock, overlaid with the dirty footprints of a million miners and dockers per day. Visitors bring new pathogens, bugs and spores, leaving a mildew-black crust over everything. It grows of its own accord and feels disconcertingly spongey underfoot.

Stakar squelches up and over the humpback bridge of the tongue. His solar wings glow, although the light is lost amid the greasy haze of pollution.

Heads swivel to follow him. More still turn when Yondu and Obfonteri follow. They mooch in his wake, the three of them in a shoddy formation. Obfonteri keeps slowing his footsteps to take the rear, then looking frustrated at himself and storming ahead again, almost catching up with Stakar before retreating, a pinball bouncing between them.

 

 

“Is that?” Stakar hears.

“Can't be.”

“No, didn't you hear? Udonta's back in.”

“Does this mean the other clans will trade here again?”

 

 

The merchant sounds worried at the prospect of competition. He needn't be. Stakar cut ties with the Collector long ago, over discrepancies in morality like whether or not keeping sapient species in cages is  _wrong._  The lifting of Yondu's banishment changes a lot of things, but it doesn't change that.

Wait.  _Other clans._ Has Yondu docked here before?

 

 

Before Stakar can follow that worm of a thought back down its hole, they reach the lift.

 

 

“Where to first?” he calls over his shoulder, because technically this is still Yondu's mission. Obfonteri grumbles something about  _patronizing_ that's lost to the creak of a packing crane. Yondu elbows him.

“Nik’s is good,” he says shortly. Then, when Stakar looks bemused - “Down the throat a lil' ways. Orloni-baitin' parlor, decent backbar. Most of the miners go there when they wanna bitch about Tivvan, cause his spy on that level takes bribes to keep tight lips. If we's after men who're tired of their commission, that's where we'll find them.”

Okay, he's definitely been here before – recently too, if he knows the haunts. That doesn't necessarily mean he's worked for Tivvan. He might just've run cargo, shipping protein cakes to the miners and spinal fluid away.

 

 

It's not like Stakar left him many employment options after he put his shun-order out on Yondu's name. Yondu couldn't pick and choose his clientele. Stakar shouldn't judge him for taking whatever jobs came his way, even if they had Tivvan's stamp on the contract.

Yeah. So long as Yondu didn't take on commissions for the Collector personally, Stakar can handle it.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The bar Yondu leads them to is what Stakar thinks of as  _Classic Knowhere_. It's nice to know that while miners come and go and proprietors piss off Tivvan and are found floating in the septic pits come lights-up, the atmosphere will never change.

Five old sots slump in the corner, their yellow jumpsuits stiff from the vomit they've been drooling down their fronts. The betting deck itself is a farrago of cusses, whoops, cheers and not-so-joking death threats. Everyone's paying far too much attention to the match to eyeball the newcomers – everyone except the chick behind the bar.

 

 

She leers at Yondu. Knowhere's Xandar-affiliated; means blue skin always gets a once-over. When it’s attached to a guy as infamous as Udonta, that's the furthest anyone dares go.

This girl however, a pint-sized Vesuvian who looks more suited to a pin-up holo, swings over the bartop and drops catlike to the far side, abandoning her dirty glasses. “Udonta,” she bellows. Her voice is shrill; it makes the Orloni freeze.

 

 

This is to its detriment. Skranks hunt through scent, not sound. They're hard of hearing, especially in the upper frequency. It barrels up behind the Orloni, dislocates its jaw and swallows it whole.

Chomp.

The crowd deflates. Stakar grimaces on the girl's behalf. She's too spritely a thing for Knowhere. They'll rip her apart for daring to interfere with the outcome of their game.

 

 

To his surprise, only one of the men lumbers around to scowl at her. “The hell was that for?” he asks, crossing both sets of his arms.

He's Gorthraxi, six-limbed and bulky with it. All four sets of biceps bulge out like the melons whose overripe, sickly perfume seeps down from the market on the deck above. “You might own this joint, girlie, but you don't get to fuck with the bets. You just lost me my week's wages, so I'll be havin' them drinks on the house.”

 

 

Stakar can't help but notice the way the other patrons shuffle away from him. Or, for that matter, the Vesuvian's smile.

 

 

The man must've had a tipple already. He’s oblivious. “Cancel my tab,” he grumbles, shoving his grubby bag of units at the winner. “We'll call it even.”

The Skrank pads back to its hole, satisfied. It's belly swings pendulous and full. The shapes of the Orloni push through the skin like foetuses in an overstuffed womb. Their legs kick slower and slower as the Skrank's stomach acid – strong enough to dissolve low-grade vibranium – eats into their brain.

The Vesuvian veers off her collision course with Yondu. She rounds on the man instead, shooting him a picaresque grin.

 

 

“Would you like me to burn off your balls first, or your face?”

His ugly face isn't improved by the frown. “Huh?”

“Balls,” the Vesuvian says, tapping her pointy chin. Flames wreathe her head in gold-orange laurels, hot enough to make Stakar’s nose sweat. “I wanna hear you scream.”

 

 

Yondu intervenes. He steps forwards, clearing his throat. “Nikki, c'mon now. I'mma need these guys alive.”

Nikki stays right where she is. “This one too? He seems kinda dense.”

“Hey,” the lug protests.

Yondu sizes him up. He falls smoothly into his captain's persona, selecting his nastiest grin. “Point. Still, might make good cannon fodder.”

“ _Hey_ ,” says the lug again, more peevishly. They both ignore him. Nikki turns around, arms crossed over her boyish chest.

“You fuckin' swine, Udonta. Who the hell're you to stop my fun?”

Yondu's grin turns a little plastic. “Still holdin' a grudge?”

 

 

Stakar swallows his sigh. One day, Yondu will introduce him to somebody who he  _hasn't_ pissed off.

 

 

Nikki stops menacing her patron. She stalks towards Yondu instead. “You show your face here, after that malarkey on Coruscant? You owe me big-time, blue boy.”

“The fuck's a  _malarkey_?”

“Don't you change the subject. That was five crates of inner-system whiskey you promised me! Proper shit – pot still! Not moonshine! And what do I get?”

“A shipment of handmade liquor from the  _Eclector_ micro-brewery?”

“Rot,” says Nikki, “ _gut_.” She enunciates each word with a little pebble of spit, pattering on Yondu's boots. “Paint-stripper. Smelled like you brewed it in your underwears, old man.”

Yondu doesn’t deny that charge. “Hey now. I bottled it up nice an’ pretty for ya.”

“Mm-hm. Sure as hell did. In inner-system bottles, custom-stamp and all! Which means you pulled off the hard part of the job – so don't give me no shit about not being able to hoof it through the prohibition zone. You just drank my wares on the way!”

 

 

She closes the distance between them, scattering miners to either side. She’s five-foot bristling match, topped with a crackling flame.

Stakar considers revving up his solar arcs, but the bar’s so dark there’s no way he could make it subtle. He's just got to trust that Yondu has this under control. Which, as with most things about this job, is easier said than done.

 

 

Nikki doesn't cast Stakar so much as a sideways glance. She pushes on her toes, posturing up at Yondu. It's strange seeing someone make him look tall, not that Stakar plans on saying so.

“You owe me,” she growls.

Yondu raises his hands. “Hey now. You don't check the cargo? That makes it your liability. After I tricked ya, did you ever fall for it again?”

Nikki blusters. “Of course not!”

“Well then. Consider it a learnin' experience. Why, I oughta charge ya for passin' on the wisdom of my –“

 

 

A flame erupts from Nikki's forefinger. Yondu doesn't leap backwards – not quite. He claps a hand over his scorched goatee. “Ow!”

 

 

“You  _owe_ me,” Nikki insists.

“Okay! Hell, woman. No need to get out the freaking fireworks. Hell's wrong with you – you on the rag or what?”

 

 

If Stakar were anything other than what he is – the Admiral of the combined Ravager clans, respected by most and feared by all – he would very much like to drop his face into his hands.

 

 

Nikki smiles sweetly. “Balls or face?” she asks.

A quiet 'ooooh' makes the rounds of the boozehouse. A few bets are tossed back and forth. Some skinny Belter-guy, pissed off his head, even elbows Stakar and asks if he wants in, before a soberer friend yanks him away hard enough to dislocate his delicate low-gravver shoulder.

 

 

Stakar pays them no attention. He watches Obfonteri.

He needs to know how dire this situation is, whether it's time for him to call the split. Yondu won't do it, not while he's watching. But if it's difficult to run a recruitment drive if your captain has beef with the barkeep, trying to convince anyone you're a leader with your testicles fused to your leg is nigh impossible.

Obfonteri seems unconcerned. A small grin plays at the corner of his lips, and when someone taps his shoulder and asks if he wants into the pool, he lays a wager, pitting a bag of silver chits against a cranky old M-ship from the salvage heaps.

 

 

Huh. He doesn't have a bad smile – if you discount the tin-capped teeth.

 

 

Next moment, Yondu whistles. The arrow darts out of its harness. It revolves, lazy as a feline rolling in the sun, an inch from Nikki's eyeball.

They hold the stand-off a whole minute. Then Yondu cracks a grin and Nikki spurts a laugh. The flame vanishes; the arrow shoots back to roost on Yondu's hip.

 

 

“Good to see ya, kid,” Yondu says.

“You too, old man.” Nikki tucks her thumbs in her pockets. She wears a modified version of the miners' jumpsuit, sleeveless and cut off above the knee. It's not just for style; the fabric is charred and black around the holes. Must've burned away last time she got in a proper fight. “Where's the brat?”

Yondu's expression shutters, but only briefly. “Quill's older than ya.”

“Still a brat.”

None of them dispute that.

Nikki gauges the tension between them, then groans exaggeratedly, swaggering back to the bar. “He went AWOL again, huh? C'mon. What's the longest he's run away for?”

“Four months,” Obfonteri says, as Yondu isn't going to. “An' counting.”

“Shit. Sorry – weren't trying to poke no sores.” Nikki uncorks a bottle of something strong enough to crisp the hairs on Stakar's chest. “How's about a drink? Ease your troubles.”

Yondu perks up. “On the house?”

“You fuckin' wish.”

“So much for that good ol' Venusian hospitality.”

“Ha.” Nikki sloshed the bottle warningly, steam curling from its slim neck. Or perhaps just from her hand. “Funny. You still fuckin' owe me.”

“And I'll pay ya back. Swear it.” Yondu turns his grin on the other patrons, who hastily shove the results of their betting pool into pockets, cleavage, belly rolls and mouths. “Fore I can start running liquor for you though, I need myself a crew.”

 

 

And so it begins. Stakar's here to look pretty and flash his wallet. He lets Yondu take care of the hustle, weaving through the crowded room, clapping men on the back, promising them drinks now and riches beyond their wildest dreams later.

“Anyway,” he finishes his latest pitch, “helluva lot better than workin' for a freak like Tivvan. Whaddya say?”

 

 

From what Stakar hears, the majority agree. He settles back, resting his elbows on the bar. He's been forking out for the rounds, as Yondu's mooching off his charity. This is a solid investment though. He convinces himself as much, casting his eye over the miners one by one. These men are sturdy folks, a hardscrabble lot suited to life on the lam. They're here because they have nowhere else to go. Shine brighter prospects in their general direction and they'll follow it like hawks after a laser pointer. They'll be earning soon enough, paying him back threefold.

But while he's happy Yondu's found a decent set of men to replace those he left floating in the between Berhert and Kreespace, that's not the real reason for his grin.

Yondu's affiliated with Nikki, not the Collector. He's been smuggling booze through Skrullspace, nothing more severe. Stakar hadn't realized how terrified he’d been of the alternative, until he was left sagging with relief, a drink perspiring coolly in his hand and a rare dash of hope in his heart.

 

 

Shame it doesn't last.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

They're on their way back when it happens. They've swung by the scrapyard to hook a tow-line up to Kraglin’s new M-ship and have added thirty names to the _Quadrant's_ rosters – a modest amount; enough to run the ship without putting a dent in Tivvan’s labor-force.

Even so, people take notice. And where people take notice, the Collector does too. They're sauntering to the cage lifts that crawl up and down the Celestial's esophagal tube when Tivvan plays his hand.

 

 

She totters on pure-white heels, her dress a froth of sea-foam. She looks like a hologram, projected over the grime and detritus that lines the gulley and overflows onto the street. As if you could touch her and your hand would pass right through.

 

 

No one tries. No one dares. The miners might be down on their luck, but for the most part, they aren't actively suicidal.

 

 

“Captain Udonta,” she says in her musical voice. Krylorian accent, just like all the rest. They might be one of the more common species in this quadrant, but despite his love of collectibles, Tivvan also has a thing for pink.

Freak.

“My master wishes to know whether you are interested in a new commission? It is of the usual nature – a retrieval, highly confidential, generously compensated…”

 

 

Yondu's gaze flits to Stakar and back again.

“Nah,” he says. “Not today, darlin’. Ain’t in the mood.”

He tries too hard to sound casual. It doesn't fly – doesn't even get off the ground.

 

 

Down goes Stakar's heart, sinking away from him. It dives into the pit of his belly and far beyond. So much for hoping.

 

 

The girl bobs her head and retreats, work done. Most likely there wasn't even a job on the table. Tivvan is a very smart man – most folks tend to be, after a few millennia of experience. He knows exactly what he's doing. Just like Stakar knows he's being played, a string pressed to the frets beneath a fiddler's fingertips.

Doesn't stop it working though.

 

 

He walks around the pack of ensigns. Their clumsy chest thumps follow him, along with Yondu’s quiet “Stakar, c'mon...”

Stakar pretends not to hear it. He keeps walking onto the cage lift, and stares at the knobbly, slime-glossed pustules on the wall as they're regurgitated into the giant's mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Had a bugger of a time uploading this and am now grumpy. Thank you for every comment, and sorry this chapter's so short!**


	7. I grant I never saw a Goddess go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING FOR MILDLY COERCIVE SEX.**

They decide to keep their three-shift pattern until the crew's broken in. No sense leaving men who've never flown more than back-seat in a shuttle transport in charge of a Ravager galleon, even one as small as the _Quadrant._

Unfortunately, this means Stakar and Yondu have to stand on Bridge, overseeing the men's first fumbling attempts at piloting, swapping conversation like nothing's happened.

 

 

Stakar can't call him out. He won't do that to Yondu, not in front of a new crew. But a hundred whispers scratch at the corners of his mind.

_There are people in cages because Yondu put them there._

_Yondu, who should know better._

_Yondu, who should be angrier than anyone at the thought._

He doesn’t know it. Not explicitly. But the fear’s there, and the doubt, and the same twisting nausea that winds like a threadworm in his guts as when Millai’s parents first came to him, with a picture of a little girl with eyes like amethyst jewels…

 

 

“Don't touch!” Yondu swats a young woman's hand. It retracts from the emergency vent button just in time. “Okay, new rule! You see yellow an' black stripes, that means _stay the fuck away._ ”

The girl blinks. Her eyelids are translucent and crinkly as clingfilm. “My species don't see in color.”

“Great. Jus' great. Guys, ya gotta _communicate –_ which means not lettin' the color-blind chick anywhere near a nav-plinth. Girl, get to comms. You – Kronan. Think this chair can take yer weight?”

The Kronan looks dubious. “I can find out?”

Yondu claps him on the shoulder. “Thas the spirit.”

 

 

He's good at this. That's the worst thing. Even with Stakar's stare nibbling on his neck, Yondu can play the captain, and he plays it damn well. Almost as good as Stakar himself.

 

 

Of course he does. Stakar taught him.

 

 

Stakar watches him move among his new crew, feeling his way, flying by his pointy blue ears. He doesn't touch his men with quite the level of familiarity Stakar remembers from the early days, when Yondu fell in with his bunch of redcoats who would follow him through exile and into a miserable space-death, vented by their own brothers. But he isn't frugal with contact either. A nudge here, a hand on the back there, steering them through the motions.

On a ship the size of the _Starhawk,_ Stakar has to maintain distance between himself and the ranks. However, the smaller your vessel, the more important it becomes to foster familiarity. Camaraderie. The sense that regardless of who wears the flame on their arm and who wears it on their chest, you’re all in this together.

Stakar misses that, just a little.

 

 

“Now, that 'un's showin' our fuel level.” Yondu's nail clicks on a dial. “See where it's nearin' the black band? Means it's almost empty. First job's gonna be getting' our girl here to the off-world ports.”

It’s far more prudent to pretend this is a team bonding exercise than to mention that you literally can't coordinate a refuel of a ship the _Quadrant's_ size with only three people at the helm. Stakar realizes he's smiling. He makes himself stop.

 

 

“Why d'you call your ship a lady, Cap?” asks the chick who's been swapped to comms. She clips the headset into place around her translucent skull. It sinks in a little way as if her bones are made from gelatin. Stakar just hopes she wipes it off after. “After an’ old friend?”

Quiet 'oohs' patter about the Bridge. The crew don't yet know how much to push, how much backchat is okay, what will earn them a chuckle and what a stint in the brig.

Yondu'll have to start coming down harder on them soon. Knowhere miners don’t follow anyone who baulks at dishing out discipline. But for now, Yondu can afford to be lenient, though his grin looks a touch strained.

 

 

“Old Terran habit.”

“Oh yeah,” says another man, a hatchet-faced fellow with feathery Shi'ar hair. “You flew with the Guardians of the Galaxy, right cap’n? Big damn heroes, those kids.”

Various murmurs of assent. “I got family on Xandar.”

“Same. They done good by us.”

 

 

Yondu doesn't reply. Stakar steps in instead. Whatever his grievances against Tivvan, he won't let Yondu’s newfound captaincy crash and burn. Not until he's thought everything through. And maybe, just maybe, done what he should've done last time unsavory accusations against Udonta came to light: demanded to hear Yondu’s side of the story before forcing a confession.

“Your captain fought alongside 'em twice now,” he says, discarding his nobby Arcturian accent just enough to fit in. He's been still and quiet for so long that, with the exception of a few sideways glances and whispers of _that’s the actual Admiral_ (flattering) _; holy shit I’m on the same ship as Stakar fuckin’ Ogord_ (also flattering) _;_ and _do his solar wings always sparkle like that?_ (less so; Stakar makes them dim) the new crew have forgotten he exists. Now heels click together and fists tap chests all around the Bridge: an uncertain snare roll of knuckles on leather.

 

 

Stakar chuckles, clapping Yondu on the shoulder.

“At ease, at ease. I'm here as your captain's friend, not as your Admiral. If you want to hear about the Guardians’ adventures, I suggest you ask Captain Udonta in your rec hours. For now, you need to concentrate. Listen. Learn. If you manage to guide this ship into dock by the time we reach the _Starhawk,_ I'll consider granting you your flames.”

“Give ‘em flames?” asks Yondu out the corner of his mouth.

“If they earn them.”

“This early?”

“Why not?”

 

 

Usually there’s a wait period – a month at least, to see if they can stick out the general grind of Ravager life. Space piracy isn’t all battles and firefights, as some as their younger recruits seem to assume. There’s a helluva lot of rust-proofing and canon maintenance too.

But these guys are all of a mature sort. They know better than to expect any job to be all-adrenaline, all the time – and they’re wise enough not to want it either. Yondu’s offered them a better alternative than Tivvan, that’s all. Until that no longer becomes true, they’re his.

 

 

Yondu shrugs. He plasters on a bigger grin than before. “Okay! If I talk y'all through refuelin' procedures, you idjits think y'all can remember it long enough for me to sit back and put up my feet?”

“Sir, yessir,” says comms-girl smartly. The others follow suit, with varying degrees of confidence. The Kronan levers his wide-load backside onto the chair, which issues several loud complaints but remains functionally intact. And just like that, as they swing around Knowhere's cranium, into the scuzzy wall of refracted sunlight from the nearest star, Yondu Udonta has a crew.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The memory of their sex lingers at the edge of Stakar’s mind. It’s musty and sour, like the taste of cunt and leather that he sucked off his fingertips. But Stakar has to talk to Yondu about the Collector. He _needs_ to.

 

 

“Meeting,” he tells Yondu. “You and me. Do the rest of y’all” – that word fits clumsily in his mouth; how Aleta would laugh if she could hear him now – “think you can handle holding a steady course until we’re done?”

The Kronan and the comms girl look at each other. “No” and “yes,” they say, respectively, at the same time.

Stakar snorts. They’ll work it out. “We’re only going to be two doors down,” he tells them. His room, of course – don't want to wake Obfonteri. “Anything goes wrong, that klaxon up there’ll sound. We’ll hear it.”

 

 

And that’s that. Stakar doesn’t give Yondu time for fumble for excuses. He rests his hand on the small of his back and gives him a gentle push.

As usual, that’s all it takes.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The longer Stakar sits at Tullk’s desk and says nothing, the more Yondu tenses. He stands side-on, like a prey animal who wants to keep both the main threat – Stakar – and the exit route – the door – in eyesight.

Of course, Yondu’s got forwards-facing eyes, designed for judging distance rather than broadening field of vision. This makes it kinda difficult. He winds up turning his head a lot, until he steels his jaw and forces himself to glare at Stakar dead-on. “What d’you want?”

 

 

It comes out confrontational, moreso than Yondu intended. He doesn’t say sorry though. Damn brat.

 

 

Stakar looks around them. “I like this room,” he says. “Tullk. He was a good man, wasn’t he?”

If Yondu’s shoulders wind any higher they’ll brush his earrings. “Yeah. Uh, yeah. He was. One of the best.”

Stakar runs his fingers along the desk edge. He imagines fucking Yondu over it. Stamping the shape of the divots into his belly and hips like sharp cold lovebites. Making him squirm against the steel. “I would’ve liked to meet him.”

 

 

If Obfonteri was here, he’d mutter that Stakar could’ve, if he hadn’t banished them. That thanks to Stakar, Tullk wasn’t going to have a funeral, so they’d never meet again.

Obfonteri isn't here.

 

 

“I didn’t call you here to talk about Tullk.”

“I know.”

“You know why we’re here then?”

A small flash ignites in Yondu’s eyes. It vanishes again just as quickly. “I ain’t a child, Stakar.”

Stakar frowns. “I know that.”

“So quit talkin’ to me like I’m one. This about Tivvan, yeah?”

Well, yes. But… “I didn’t mean to patronize you.”

 

 

Yondu’s sullen shrug doesn’t help his cause, neither does his pout of a scowl. Honestly, no one his age should be able to pull that expression off.

 

 

Stakar sighs. “Tell me about this business with Tivvan. You know Ravagers don’t deal in people. Kids or otherwise.”

“Good thing I weren’t a Ravager then.”

“You said otherwise at the time.”

“Yeah, well.” Yondu crossed his arms. “S’all well an’ good callin’ yerself Ravager, but if ya can’t get no jobs with the regular clientele, you gotta scout a bit further afield.”

“And your scouting took you to Knowhere?”

“Yeah.” Yondu chewed his cheek a minute, puckering his stubble. “Look. Tivvan extended the offer hisself, when I was real hard-up. Were real generous about it too. Said he’d pay real sweet if I were sweet back.”

 

 

That sounds a little too intimate for Stakar’s liking. His head fills with the unwanted image of blue fingers knotted in a bilgesnipe ruff, black painted lips trailing scarred thighs. “Tell me you and him never…”

Yondu looks at him weirdly. Then the pieces click together and he looks at him weirder still. “Hell no! His brother’s more into the whole sugar-daddy thing anyway.”

Tivvan morphs into En Dwi Gast. That’s no better. “ _Please_ stop making me picture that.”

“I ain’t makin’ you do nothin’. You just got a dirty mind, old man.”

“I do _not,_ I…”

“An’,” said Yondu, valiantly steering them back on track, “ol’ Tivs never once asked me to poach sapients. Flowers and freaky animals only. Think he knew it’d be, a, uh, conflict of interests.”

 

 

He says that like it absolves him. “That trade still went on, and you know it.”

“I didn’t have no other damn choice! Tivvan paid well, and my crew…”

“Your crew,” Stakar repeats. “The same crew who made you hit Peter Quill? That crew? Because unless I misheard our earlier conversation on the subject, I thought you admitted that you had a choice about that.”

 

 

He’s being nasty now, and he knows it. Yondu’s mouth flaps unattractively. He has no counter argument, nothing more to say, other than “Had to keep food in the galley somehow, didn’t I?”

It doesn’t sound like he expects an answer. That’s good. Stakar has one, but he doesn’t plan on sharing it.  _You could’ve come to me on your knees. Alone. Desperate. Me as your only hope. Then I might have listened._

 

 

After all, he scraped the kid up from rock bottom once.

 

 

It’s fucked up. Stakar knows it. People aren’t a jigsaw you can take apart and rearrange. But he was so _angry_ back then, smarting from the betrayal as much as from the horror at what Yondu had done in the Ravager name, and…

 

 

“I’m tired of this conversation,” he says.

Yondu blinks. “You’re lettin’ me off the hook?”

Stakar doesn’t know. He _doesn’t know._ But he doesn't want to think of all the things he might've done, if only Yondu had let him. He smiles tiredly. “Just saying I can think of some better uses for that pretty mouth.”

 

 

Yondu glances at the door again. He forces his head back around. “Stakar…”

“C’mon, princess.” Stakar slouches on the desk chair. He thumbs open his top button, looking direct at Yondu, and pulls out his party piece with a wink. “I’m calling break.”

“But the crew…”

“Has that klaxon gone off?” Yondu shakes his head. “Well, until it does, let’s act as if it doesn’t intend to.”

 

 

Yondu steps closer, almost reluctantly. His gulp travels up and down his throat. “Kraglin…”

This is where Stakar should stop pushing. His goal isn’t to come between Yondu and his XO. Right?

 

 

It’s just. _Unfair._ That’s all. Unfair that Obfonteri’s insecurities are driving this wedge between him and his old friend, keeping them apart.

Stakar certainly isn’t bothered that they’re fucking. Kraglin’s important to Yondu. He _respects_ that, because he respects Yondu. If only Kraglin could be so mature.

 

 

Stakar shows none of this outwardly. He just shrugs, one hand cupping his chin, the other lazily pulling at his dick.

“Your choice,” he drawls. Spreads his legs a little wider. “Either put this in your mouth, princess, or keep it shut. You know where the door is – you’ve been looking at it since we got in.”

Yondu jerks like he’s been caught with one hand in the candy jar. “This’s Tullk’s room,” he mumbles.

 

 

Tullk isn’t around to be upset about it, but Stakar’s too smart to say that. He just keeps stroking. Up and down, up and down, smooth and slow, oozing control. The ridges start their flare, pulsing against his palm.

“We can move. Spare cabins down the hall.”

“They all belonged to someone once.”

 

 

 _And their ghosts are watching, because I won’t give them a funeral._ Stakar lets the unspoken remain that way.

 

 

“I’m not going to make the choice for you,” he says kindly. His cock’s getting stiffer, enough to hold itself up. “You don’t want this, you go.”

Yondu snorts, but his gaze clings to Stakar’s hand as it journeys from his fat base to the ridges to the slight taper at the tip. “Generous.”

 

 

Yet still he wavers, inching to Stakar in baby steps. At this rate, Stakar will finish before he gets a mouth on him, the silk of a hot kitten tongue.

 

 

“If we do this,” he tells Yondu, still in his gentlest voice, “we do it right.”

“I ain’t even said I _want_ to do it yet.”

“Are you,” Stakar says over the grumbling, “amenable to using the same safewords, or do you want new ones?”

“I dunno! I dunno what I, what I _want,_ Stakar…”

Stakar understands. He does, truly. “It’s okay,” he says, soft again. “So long as you’re here, I’ll just keep talking. Okay?”

“ _None_ of this is okay.”

 

 

Stakar doesn’t stop stroking, coordinating it in time with his eye roll. “Look. You want to leave, you go. I’m not stopping you.”

Bang. Yondu’s knees hit the floor. Stakar winces for him. “Uh, did you want to grab a pillow, or…”

“I told ya not to fuckin’ patronize me.”

 

 

His hand is replaced with a blue one. It tugs him with mildly concerning ferocity. Stakar settles his on top, leaning over his lap, Yondu between his legs. “Just for my sake then. Limits?”

“Thought I was s’posed to be suckin’ you off,” Yondu complains. His sour breath breaks over Stakar’s crotch, earning a twitch and a milky bead of precum.

“Limits,” Stakar repeats, a little firmer. It’s Yondu’s turn to roll his eyes.

“They ain’t changed.”

“I want to hear them anyway.”

“ _Stars_. No whips, no collars, no gags, no ‘you’re mine’ shit or makin’ me say I belong to ya, not too much pain. Happy?”

“Be happier with your mouth on me.”

“Okay,” Yondu says, just to have the last word. But then his shoulders sink from their tense hunch and he sinks with them, down onto Stakar, swallowing him smooth and slick with the grace of long practice.

 

 

He bobs up again pretty quick. “Hell.”

Stakar cups his prickly cheek. His cock stands up, shimmery wet, red and thick-veined and throbbing. The ridges flutter, fleshy and thick. “You alright?”

 

 

Yondu wipes his lips. “Wider than I’m used to,” he says, a little hoarse. Stakar nods.

“Obfonteri.”

“Yeah. Obfonteri.” That makes Yondu’s face go all sad and crumply again, so Stakar guides him back to his cock, gives him something else to focus on. He pushes him down, gentle, so gentle, until Yondu’s snorting into his pubes and his throat moves around Stakar’s tip, rippling as he swallows.

 

 

His eyes aren’t quite at that perfect stage of dullness yet. Stakar hums, pulling him up a little way by his tall prosthetic fin. He fucks up between his slack wet lips until Yondu forgets what it means to say _no._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The rest of the shift passes without fanfare. There’s a moment where they almost activate their jump drive without a portal in sight and another where the Kronan burns their engines so slowly he risks slipping from fusion to fission and flooding their hold with radioactive waste – but other than that, it’s uneventful.

The trip to the refuel pod adds another two days to their journey, possibly more if their new crew have to be babied through every step. Plenty of time for everyone to get to know each other. So far, in Stakar’s opinion, everything’s going swimmingly.

The men adjust to life on a rolling shift. The queue at the caff machine is long, but those who have to wait their turn don’t look ready to commit homicide. They grin at Yondu and he nods back. All positive signs.

 

 

In fact, there’s only one tarnish on the ninety-ninth faction’s shiny new dawn.

 

 

Obfonteri doesn't wait for Stakar to relieve him. He slouches onto deck before Stakar can saunter off it, a caff pot cradled in his long thin hands.

As soon as Stakar clocks him he knows he hasn't slept. The bags under his eyes are black as peat bogs, like he's cropped a double-shiner, and his breath smells like something crawled into his mouth to die. He imagines Obfonteri hunched like a gargoyle on the bed he and Yondu share, dementedly polishing his knives. Not a fun image. Time to make some amends.

 

 

“Morning,” he says, heading over. He feels wonderfully loose from that orgasm Yondu sucked out of him last cycle, swallowing every last drop. “You look like you could use some more shut-eye, soldier. Want me to cover half your shift?”

It's a generous offer – one most self-respecting Ravagers, who only get out of their berths if they're paid to do so, would snap at. Obfonteri just gives him a watery evil-eye and nurses his caff pot.

 

 

“I’m fine.”

Stakar waits.

“Sir.”

There it is. Obfonteri takes another surly draft of caff. The bitter stink abrades Stakar’s nose.

“Have fun then,” he says.

 

 

Obfonteri grunts. He nods greetings to the new crew. His neck’s all stiff. Someone’s not a people person, or a morning person either.

Usually that would be bad news for an XO, but Yondu has enough cheer, feigned or otherwise, for the both of them. Stakar considers dithering around and watching over their shoulders but doesn’t think they’d appreciate it.

 

 

They needed him to stand at that bar and show his support. He’s shown it. Now he needs to concentrate on not dressing Yondu down on the eve of his commission. Bolstering the crew’s rapport. Improving morale. Not brooding over the shrapnel-shard of betrayal that wriggles through his ribcage, dimming his solar arcs to mimic his mood.

He heads for the Bridge gate. Behind him, he hears the words ‘meeting, cap’n?’ and ‘our quarters’ being passed back and forth. He considers adding his own two unit-chits – that they ought to flip on the autopilot while Captain and XO have their little soiree, stop the newly-whetted Bridge crew defying all known laws of physics and diving their nosecone into their own aft. Yondu’s one step ahead.

“We’re gonna switch off manual for a bit,” he says, clapping his hands. “Y’all get to watch these consoles do their thing for twenty minutes.”

 

 

Obfonteri nudges him.

 

 

“An hour. Keep a damn sharp eye. I’mma give y’all a pop quiz soon as I’m back.”

He’s on top form. No more mooning after a faraway M-ship and its Terran pilot. No more leaving bloody splats of ex-crew on the gantries over the hangar. He’s bouncing back. Just like Stakar taught him.

 

 

Seems having a cock wedged down his throat was exactly what he needed.

 

 

Stakar tries to find it within himself to be proud. He slumps into Tullk’s cabin, letting the door whoosh shut of its own accord. It closes an instant too soon for him to see Kraglin and Yondu following up the corridor. Their conversation precedes them though – Stakar hears all he needs to.

“Couldn’t ya have said this out on the Bridge?”

“I said I ain’t never talkin’ no shit to you in front of crew again, Yondu. I meant it.”

 

 

So Obfonteri lets the ‘sir’ drop when they’re alone? But then the door shuts and the vacuum seal activates, sucking air from the cavity between plates with a fading hiss. Stakar’s left alone with his own steadying breath.

He removes his jacket slowly, heading back to that bevelled desk. He can’t explain why it pulls on him. Is it the endearing clumsy patience of the craftmanship? The hours that must’ve been whittled away here, shaping broken shards of salvage into something that felt like home?

He runs his hand back and forth as he undoes the leather flaps that wrap around his solar arcs. The vibration against his fingertips is oddly soothing. He wonders if this is how Yondu feels when he fidgets with his trinkets. He runs his finger to and fro and lets himself float.

 

 

That’s when the banging starts.

 

 

It’s slow. Rhythmic. Familiar. Stakar would know that sound anywhere: the bump of a headboard against a curved ship wall.

The airlock seal is between his cabin and the outside, not him and his neighbors. Vibrations flow through the conjoining wall, connecting the cabins in a mutual buzz of sound, like two bells tapped together.

Obfonteri is making the most of it.

 

 

 _He planned this,_ Stakar realizes, recalling the man’s gritty red eyes and his scowl, teeth stained yellow-brown with caff. He can’t help but chuckle. _He’s got balls, alright._

Stakar can hear them slapping, if he concentrates.

His first thought is offence. Obtonteri obviously wants to piss him off. This is blatant disrespect.

 

 

His second thought is grudging admiration. He can hear Yondu _whimpering,_ and from the sounds of it, they’ve only just begun.

 

 

His third? Well, that’s not so much a thought at all. Arousal settles in his abdomen, a downy bed of it, smothering like ash.

 

 

Stakar scoots down on the bed. He touches his crotch, just gently. Strokes his soft cock through the leather. Draws a shaky breath.

“C'mon,” whispers Yondu from the wall’s far side. The hell’s Kraglin doing, to make him beg so quickly? “Do it, do it, c'mon.. _._ ”

“No,” Obfonteri grits. Stakar’s imagination paints one pretty picture after another. A hand locked bruise-tight on Yondu’s leaking cock. The other on his nape, pinning him face-first. “I ain’t puttin’ it in. You don’t deserve it, not today.”

 

 

Hell. He’s not screwing him after all – just fucking between his thighs, rough enough to bounce him off the headboard.

Yondu hisses reproachfully. He doesn’t argue. He must be feeling guiltier about sucking Stakar off than he let on.

 

 

Honestly, thinks Stakar, leisurely fondling his balls, if Kraglin wants them to stop messing about with each other, he needs to be a bit more direct about it. Yondu’s the sort of guy who takes anything but an outright ‘no’ as permission – and, when it comes to liberating other people’s property, he sometimes ignores the ‘no’ too.

Unless Kraglin steps up and tells Yondu to his face that his fling with Stakar isn’t good with him – well. He’s got no one to blame but himself, does he?

 

 

“Squeeze ‘em together,” Kraglin says. His voice is all tight – evidently not as tight as the gap between Yondu’s legs. “ _Together_ , I said.” Thump, thump, thump. “Yeah. Thassit.”

“Krags…”

“Don’t even need no lube. Yer lil’ pussy’s leakin’ enough, ain’t it? Lookit all this.” _Squelch, squelch, squelch._ “Bet ya wanna finger in it, don’t ya?”

“ _Krags…_ ”

“Well, tough. This is all ya get.” And off he goes, rutting furiously between his slick-slippery legs, over his tingling cunt-lips and jabbing his ballsack from behind.

 

 

The commentary’s for Stakar’s benefit. So why shouldn’t he enjoy this?

He slouches against his pillow, chin propped on his chest. He shuts his eyes and _pictures it:_ Kraglin’s spider-long hands scooping under Yondu’s pouch, never quite brushing his prick. The shine on Yondu’s inner thighs from where his wetness bubbles over, leaking out of him, hot from his body. The glide of Kraglin’s cock between his legs, back and forth, torturing Yondu with every brush of his clit.

Stakar’s dick jumps in his hand. He circles his thumb over the head, rubbing the fold of foreskin, his breath rasping ragged.

 

 

He’s not going to get hard again, not properly. One a day _is_ a little much for a guy on the cusp of a hundred.

 

 

But the heat’s still there, and the _need,_ and he doesn’t know which of them he wants to be, whether he wants that skinny dick plunging back and forth over him, or to be humping Yondu’s chubby thighs like a dog, and it all whirls higher and higher, closer and closer, more and more and _more_ until it all leaks out from him in a sigh and a sag and a moment of pure white bliss.

Beyond the wall, Kraglin’s huffs come ragged. Nice to know that pace isn’t effortless on his part.

Stakar floats down from his peak, cock spilling from his wet palm. The last drizzle squeezes out of him, oozing down the leg of his pants.

 

 

“Fuck,” he says, quiet enough that – he hopes – they don't hear.

He sponges himself off before he hits the hay, rubbing the dry-wash around his crotch and over his leathers. Hopefully it collects the jizz before it stains, otherwise Aleta will have some very choice insults for him at the next captains' meet.

 

 

Stakar's not thinking about that though. Not really. He’s thinking about how Yondu’s dirty leer slips away when you pinch his pierced nips, grind against his hip, play with the head of his sticky blue dick.

None of which Kraglin’s doing right now. They must’ve finished while Stakar was in the bathroom. From the other side of the wall, there’s only silence, bitter as the smell of caff on Kraglin’s rotten breath.

 


	8. my mistress when she walks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **THINGS GO TITS-UP. Even more-so. Be ye warned. Kraglin and Yondu showcase some VERY bad BDSM practice. They both hurt each other, and Stakar - of course - makes things worse. I don't want to spoil, but in the interests of keeping everyone un-triggered - Kraglin disobeys one of Yondu's fundamental bedroom rules out of frustration, and pays the price.**

“Morning.” It’s always somebody’s morning, here.

“Mornin’, sir.” Obfonteri looks disheartened by Stakar's grin. What? Did he think that was it – that he'd show Stakar how well he gave it to his old friend, and Stakar'd drop out of the race?

 

 

 _No,_ Stakar reminds himself, nails digging into his palms. _Not a competition. Yondu's not a prize. Don't treat him like one. He deserves better than that._

 

 

He smiles at Kraglin, being sure to keep it genuine. Flash the teeth – just quickly, not long enough for it to be perceived as a threat. “How’s things?”

Obfonteri shifts boot to boot. He snatches his gruel bowl from the matter processor as soon as it dings. “Okay.”

Not one for small-talk. Stakar adapts; it’s what he does best. Obfonteri wants to keep their conversation to the strict necessities? Stakar can work with that. “What’s your plan for the shift?”

Obfonteri’s shrug is as spiky as the rest of him. “Gonna look over that M-ship of mine.”

“Needs some TLC, does she?” Stakar keeps smiling, hoping that Obfonteri will join in. He suspects he’d have better luck waiting for a mountain to be whittled away by the wind. “You know, I used to get down and dirty with engineware on my off-shifts. Just to relax, you know. If you need a helping hand” –

“Crew need someone to watch ‘em,” says Obfonteri. His _sir_ is lagging again. It catches up before Stakar can call him out on it. “Sir. Anyway, I like workin’ alone.”

 

 

Stakar understands that too. He suspects he’d understand a lot of what goes on in Obfonteri’s weaselly little head, if the man would let him. Obfonteri’s the only one here trying to make them enemies.

 

 

He nods. “Off you go then,” he says, like Obfonteri was waiting for dismissal. “These fine gentlemen need their nutrigruel.”

The few stragglers from the lunchtime change-over shift thump their chests and shuffle their feet and look grateful. Stakar gets out of their way. He watches Obfonteri skulk for the door, given a wide berth by his crew.

 

 

Part of an XO’s job is to be in touch with his men. Right now, Obfonteri’s failing at it. That’s something Stakar’s going to have to raise with him sooner or later. Sooner, if Yondu refuses to handle it personally.

 

 

Oh, Stakar knows what’s wrong with him. The man doesn’t want a new crew, not so soon after losing his old compatriots.

In an ideal galaxy, Obfonteri would have time to mourn, but the Andromedarian spiral is very far from that. For now, the most Stakar can do is take up the slack, guide the Bridge crew through their duties and give Obfonteri the space he needs. It’d be nice if the man showed gratitude for it, but Stakar doesn’t get up his hopes.

 

 

He’s halfway through the shift, watching the Kronan plod through the slowest course alignment procedure he’s ever had the misfortune to witness, when the tedium grows too much to handle.

“Usual rules,” he tells them – ignoring the Kronan’s look of dismay.

The man wants his hand held twenty-four seven. Stakar hopes he starts taking initiative soon – he’s big enough to make an impact as a space pirate, but all the mineral muscle in the world can’t substitute for confidence.

“Anything goes wrong, work it out amongst yourself – we’ve run through the motions a dozen times. Can’t figure it out? Hit the klaxon.” He waits to receive nods from the assembled crew, then heads off to see Yondu.

 

 

 _Not a competition,_ he reminds himself as he knocks on the door. But that’s hard to remember when the captain pulls it open, delightfully sleep rumpled and half-way around a yawn.

 

 

Oh, fuck. If Stakar screws him now and puts him back to bed, Obfonteri’ll come back after his stint in the engine rooms to find his captain stinking of his Admiral’s cum.

His face’ll wizen up like a raisin, and he’ll scowl at Stakar like he’s never heard that apocryphal wives’ tale about expressions sticking when the wind changes.

 

 

Yondu sags against the doorframe. “Sup?” he asks.

Stakar isn’t used to initiating. It used to be Yondu who crawled onto his lap whenever he wanted affection, squirming over him like he could ride him through their leathers, blowing kisses at Aleta and welcoming her to their pile with an ugly laugh and a grope. But right now, Yondu barely looks capable of crawling anywhere. Stakar woke him mid-sleep cycle, and it shows. He spares a moment to feel guilty about it, then remembers why he’s here.

 

 

“Was on your chair,” he said, casually placing his foot in the doorway so it can’t slide closed. “Thinking about you. How good you looked on it.”

Yondu looks more tired than ever. “Didn’t ya get off last night?”

 

 

So he did hear him after all. In answer to Yondu’s question – yes, Stakar did, and he reckons another romp in such short order might be beyond him. But he doesn’t need his dick to take Yondu apart.

“You didn’t.”

Yondu’s gaze meanders down to find its usual focal point around Stakar’s boots. “I,” he starts, then stops, almost guiltily. Shuts his eyes. Opens them again. “Don’t need it. Not from you.”

“Liar,” says Stakar affectionately. He touches his cheek, loving how Yondu automatically rolls his face into the cup of his hand. Stubble scratches his wrist as Yondu swallows.

“Stakar…”

“Yes, princess?”

“Stakar, I don’t…”

Stakar sweeps his thumb under his trembly underlip, back and forth. “You know me. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

 

 

_And you want this. I know you do._

 

 

His foot stays right where it is, over the runner that will lock the door shut with him on either side of it, hide them from the outside world. Yondu’s cheek rests against his palm. His breath shakes on the exhale, wobbling hot down Stakar’s sleeve.

“Okay?” He’s pushing, but only gently. Always gently. That makes it all okay. “You don’t have to do anything, baby. Just lay back. Let me drive.” He licks his lips. “Wanna drink you down. Lick your cock, eat your cunt.”

There’s something beautifully helpless in Yondu’s eyes. “ _Stars_.”

“That’s right, princess. You’re going to see them.”

 

 

But when he tries to walk Yondu backwards, Yondu doesn’t go. He rocks in place, knees locked out, gulp filling his throat like Stakar’s dick did not two nights back.

 

 

“I can’t say no to you,” he whispers. It’s a confession and a plea and something else Stakar doesn’t care to hear. He rolls his broad shoulders, curls his fingers under Yondu’s chin.

“Then don’t.”

 

 

He steps forwards again. Yondu stays frozen, even when they’re nose to nose, so Stakar holds his waist and guides him backwards, into the dark, until the door can close.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

And so it becomes a little routine. Stakar fucks Yondu, then Kraglin does, or vice versa. And Yondu never quite seems _happy_ , but he certainly never says no.

It’s only natural though, after so much tension, that eventually things hit the point where they buckle or break. That point comes on the third day, as they plod away from the refuelling station, back towards Ravager star-space.

 

 

“Off bed,” Yondu gasps, a little ragged. “Too – too _loud,_ Kraglin, too” –

“S’just damn loud enough.” A pause; Stakar imagines Kraglin’s whiskers scratching Yondu’s smooth blue throat as he bends him over their stained old mattress to rail him rough from behind. “Wanna make you _scream_. For me. For him.”

 

 

Stakar sits on the bed. He shuffles back until his solar arcs clack on the wall, then freezes in case they heard.

 

 

He doesn’t know _why –_ Obfonteri’s obviously looking to put on a show, so why shouldn’t Stakar enjoy it? But somehow, the perversity of it, listening in on their sex, is made so much more _thrilling_ when he can pretend he’s peeping at something private.

This is all a big game. Like any other scene – a sketch show tailored for everyone’s pleasure. They know he knows, just as much as he knows they know he knows, and it’s that feedback loop of _shame_ and _want_ and _danger_ that keeps it invigorating.

At least, Stakar thinks so.

 

 

“ _No,_ ” whispers Yondu, so quiet Stakar has to press his ear to the wall to hear.

The thumps slow in tempo, but don’t stop. Like Kraglin’s fucking his ass slow, forcing him to feel every burning inch.

“C’mon,” he purrs. “Admit it, baby. You like it – you fuckin’ love it.”

“ _No._ ”

“Damn slut.” Squelch, squelch; fingers press around where they’re joined. “Yer body’s sayin’ somethin’ else, baby. Look at this lil’ cunt. All slick and shiny just from takin’ a cock up your dirt hole.”

 

 

This time, Yondu’s whimper is wordless.

Kraglin talks plenty for both of them.

“Filthy fucking bitch. You like this so much yer droolin’ for it, both ends. Look at ya. Shovin’ yerself back like you ain’t gotta walk out on that Bridge in an hour and act like we was talkin’ specs. Big scary cap’n, cum leakin’ down his thighs…”

 

 

Stakar can’t break away. He’s crushed to the wall, heart pounding. He tells himself it’s concern for Yondu’s safety, that as soon as he’s tipped off that he’s _genuinely_ not having fun he’ll punch a hole with his solar wing and fly Obfonteri into the nearest sun.

But he knows better than anyone that _no_ can, if discussed properly beforehand, mean _make me._

And Kraglin does. Next moment Yondu _whines._ His husky voice has two tones, high and low at once.

 

 

Stakar imagines his knuckles standing out white from where he grips the bedpost, tighter than tight even as he tells Kraglin to move their sex-games elsewhere.

Oh yeah. He’s _loving it._

 

 

“Say it,” Kraglin growls.

He only adds the narration for Stakar’s benefit. That doesn’t stop it being hot as Stakar’s solar arcs or prevent his cock from flushing treacherously against the back of his fly. He breathes in time with Yondu’s wretched gasps on the far side of the wall, both of them willing Obfonteri on.

“Say it nice and loud now. Tell him you love this.”

“F-fuck…”

“Yeah, you love the fuck. Take it in any hole, don’t ya. All three at once if ya could. Greedy lil’ bitch.” Kraglin’s laugh has a nasty edge. “Is that what this is about, huh? One not enough to keep you going?”

 

 

Yondu doesn’t seem to notice. He sounds high, hungering for it, sloppy as he always gets when he’s this far gone. “Want more, Krags, c’mon, want…”

“ _Say it._ ”

 

 

There’s silence for a beat, broken by that rhythmic squish-clonk, squish-clonk, the slap of bony hips on a lovely round ass that hasn’t aged nearly as badly as the rest of him.

Yondu burbles something to his inner elbow. It’s too weak and slurred for Stakar to catch. Kraglin must realize it, because there’s a crack of a hand on an ass cheek followed by Yondu’s pent-up hitch of a sob.

 

 

 _Careful,_ Stakar wants to hiss. _Not too much pain. A spank or two’s fine, gives him that edge, but don’t you ever hit him proper or get out a whip or…_

Kraglin already knows. He’s been by Yondu’s side for longer than Stakar was. Might’ve been fucking him the whole time too.

_He already knows._

 

 

Stakar peels his cheek from the wall. He tries to decipher his feelings.

 

 

Could this be _jealousy?_ This beaker of hot acid upended in his chest?

No. Or at least, that’s only one component.

 

 

Obfonteri fucks Yondu wet and beautiful not three yards away. And it isn’t a competition – no matter what Obfonteri might think – but for some reason, Stakar still feels like he’s losing. Like he’s already lost.

It’s almost as if, when he banished Yondu thirty years ago, he irrevocably changed things between them. And if he keeps chasing after what used to be, he’s never going to be satisfied.

 

 

“Say it, slut.”

Obfonteri knows not to withdraw at that whimper; knows that’s his cue to push on. Knows just where to poke to have Yondu _squirming._

“Nice and loud now. Might touch yer cock if you make it pretty.”

 

 

Stakar could get off the bed. He could go sit at Tullk’s desk, flick through one of his old recipe datapads. Try and piece together his image of the man whose corpse he refuses to hunt down and burn.

 

 

“ _I-love-it._ ”

 

 

Stakar could stay right where he is.

 

 

“Slower. Space yer words.”

 

 

Stakar could unzip his pants.

 

 

“Ain’t – ain’t a fuckin’ child” –

Another crack; another sharp inhale.

“Act like a brat, get treated like one. Now _say it._ ”

 

 

Yondu breathes in long shaky sobs. The smacks and squelches slow to a torturous grind. Stakar pulls out his half-chubbed prick and helps it the rest of the way.

He imagines Kraglin’s cock, rangy as the rest of him, rubbing merciless circles against Yondu’s prostate. His pulse jumps under his thumb. His ridges flex like they’re gasping too.

 

 

At long last, Yondu gathers enough air to try again. “I – I love i-it” –

 

 

Crack.

“Without stutterin’.”

 

 

Stars. So _this_ is what that steely shadow is, lurking beneath Obfonteri’s big-eyed surface. Stakar bites his lip; pulls faster.

There’s something immensely satisfying about listening to another man work. Most folks would think otherwise, when that man’s working on someone you love. But monogamy’s never been Stakar’s mug of moonshine. He loves to hear how much Yondu’s enjoying this, the evidence of how wet he is, that cute blue pussy making filthy squishes where it sticks to Kraglin’s pubes. He’s always loved it, with any of his partners, to know that they’re happy.

 

 

Oddly, he kinda likes hearing Kraglin’s pleasure too.

 

 

Yondu’s getting off on the knowledge that he’s eavesdropping. Stakar’s getting off on it too. Who knows what Kraglin’s enjoying – a sense of revenge, most likely, for what transpired when Yondu and Stakar were left alone on the Bridge.

Somehow, it has to be enough.

Stakar thumbs the wet head of his cock, heat starting its slow stoke inside him. _It’s enough._

 

 

“I-I-I-I…”

“ _Without_ stutterin’, I said. You listenin’ to me?”

“Yeah – yes” –

 

 

A set of smacks ring out, one two three. Staka’s hand slows down – grudgingly, almost against his will.

Okay, that has to be edging towards the high end of Yondu’s pain threshold. Unlike most people Stakar’s fought beside and fucked, that actually lowers when he has sex. But the smacks stop, and Yondu's high breaths shudder to a halt as he waits for the next one.

It never falls.

 

 

“Say it,” Kraglin insists, and this time Yondu does.

“I love it, fuck, fuck me baby, c'mon, _I love it..._ ”

 

 

Stakar's cock flares for a final time. His eyes roll back and he tenses, solar wings snapping pure gold. The hot spill coats his hand, pulsing up from his balls, the heat of it thrumming through him as Yondu's gabble edges up an octave and Kraglin nails him _just right_ and he _wails._

 

 

“What d’you call me here?”

Yondu’s shivering hard enough to make the bed rattle. “Krags?”

“No. What d’you call me?”

 

 

Five seconds of Yondu’s trembly breaths. No other sound. Then:

“We ain’t played this game for – for _ages,_ fuck. You sure you w-wanna… Here?”

 

 

Stakar’s sense of awareness rebuilds slowly, the white haze draining from his eyes. His frown grows in conjunction. His initial assumption – that this was a planned scene – suddenly seems less likely.

 

 

“Sir,” Obfonteri answers for him, like he doesn’t hear. His voice is a little too high. “Ya call me _sir._ I call you slut.”

“Yessir,” says Yondu, no hesitation. But there are none of the usual keening and happy wiggles Stakar associates with that word on those deadly lips. “Y’alright, Krags?”

 

 

The wet noises stop entirely. Then resume again at a higher, harder, more frenzied pace, enough to push grunts out of Yondu, make his thighs jump and quiver.

“Say it now, slut,” Obfonteri orders, his voice a gravel snarl. “Tell him you love this, tell him you’re a slut for it, tell him you’re mine, tell him who you belong to – holy _shit._ ”

Stakar slides down the wall. He digs his pinky in his ears, dabbing it in and out until the ring fades.

 

 

The whistle was short, sharp and to the point. It also, judging by the cusses, was accurate.

 

 

Stakar tucks himself into his pants. It’s a shame to abandon his pursuit when he’s so close to the finish – especially since he knows he won’t see his stiff prick for at least twenty-four hours, maybe more.

But duty calls. He’s been interrupted mid-coitus or wank by numerous catastrophes over the years, enough for him to always put the drive of the head before the yearn of the nethers. And so, without further ado, Stakar rolls to his feet, reaches for his jacket, and shuffles off in search of a medkit.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“I’m fine,” says Kraglin for the fifth time, counting their earlier confrontation on the Bridge.

“There’s a hole in you,” Stakar points out for the fourth. Then, before Yondu can get sassy: “One that isn’t supposed to be there.”

 

 

He misjudged that one. Yondu doesn’t look sassy. Yondu sits on his bed like a scolded kid, arrow on his lap. He seems very interested in his knees.

 

 

Stakar sighs to himself. He pushes the bloody jerkin at him, which Kraglin had been using as a pressure bandage by the time Stakar located the medikit his restockers had included when they prepped the ship for flight.

Mighty considerate of them. Stakar recalls the small civilization of spiders living in the emergency cupboard and wonders how long they were the only residents.

 

 

“Take this to laundry,” he tells him, not unkindly. “Try not to let the new meat see.”

The scene’s over – stopped dead, in fact, in the only way more definitive than a safeword. Stakar still wants to know why he didn’t hear one of those, but now isn’t the time.

 

 

Yondu stands on shaky legs. He nods. His eyes are far too blank, and Stakar instinctively touches him, cupping the back of his knee.

He’s knelt in front of Kraglin, helping him keep the gutshot closed until the mediscanner finishes compiling data about his species and can rebuild his torn intestines in the right shape to fit. In the wild scramble to keep Kraglin stable and stop the blood loss venturing from ‘colorful’ to ‘critical’, they haven’t exactly had chance to bring Yondu down gently.

 

 

It’ll suck, Stakar knows, but not nearly as much as letting Kraglin bleed out.

“Go,” he says gruffly, patting twice while Yondu blinks down at him like he’s not quite sure how he got there. “You got this.”

 

 

Yondu nods, although he looks less convinced than Stakar himself. He totters off, favoring one leg, unbelted pants low on his hips. Stakar wonders whether he ought to have checked him over for injuries too, because stars-know Yondu’s not in a state to admit them.

He shakes his head. Back to Kraglin.

 

 

A minute later, the mediscanner pings. Ready for action. Stakar peels the gauze off the slice for as long as it takes to squirt in the bacta gel, all of which has been coded to Kraglin's biospecs.

“Care to tell me what the hell happened?”

Kraglin is lying down. The bacta gel fills the wound, plugging it in green. A little blood oozes out, but at least he isn’t gushing anymore, and when Stakar unrolls the next gauze strip, it doesn't soak straight through.

“Not yer business,” he slurs. Stakar is having none of it.

“You were fucking him in some misguided attempt to prove a point to me. That makes it my business.”

Kraglin’s scowl spreads across his face. Stakar can watch the little wrinkles form, plowing furrows through his beard. “Like you ain’t… the same. Anyway. Weren’t… Weren’t _miss-guided._ ”

“Whatever you say. You’re the one with the leaking gut wound.”

 

 

Kraglin sinks against the mattress. His hand settles over Stakar's, the raw hot slice pressed beneath. The bacta smells of antiseptic and acetane. “Didn’t mean to.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

“No.” Kraglin shakes his head. “ _Yondu._ Didn’t mean to hit me. Jus’… jus’ spook me a lil’. Make me stop. I needed it. I... I fucked up...”

Stakar frowned. “Are you trying to defend him?”

 

 

Ravagers, as a rule, have each other's back in a firefight and punch out the lights of whoever badmouths their crew. But confessions? Admissions of guilt? Unorthodox at least, especially from the last surviving member of a crew as cutthroat as Yondu's.

 

 

Kraglin's pupils look mismatched, as if he has a concussion. One's blown up while the other shrinks small. When he wobbles his head around to face Stakar, it takes him several tries. “I... I dunno...”

Stakar eases up the fresh gauze pad to check on the slice. Closing nicely. Bacta regenerates flesh at a highly accelerated rate. They age it somewhat too. Kraglin'll have a few wrinkles instead of a scar – and thinking about it, perhaps that's why Yondu looks so worn out, since his total-body immersion in the tank.

 

 

No. That’s not about age, it's about defeat.

Yondu doesn't _fight back_ anymore. Not against Stakar. Not against Quill. This wound on Kraglin's side is the first sign of his claws. Stakar doesn't know whether it's a positive thing or otherwise.

 

 

“Look,” he says heavily. “You know he doesn't like that whole ownership thing.”

No need to discuss why. Yondu's origins are no secret. Those are dangerous, in this business. Best wear your weaknesses on your sleeve and murder anyone who tries to take advantage.

Kraglin tries to cross his arms. That'll pull on his wound; Stakar stops him before he can dislodge any bacta.

“Stay _still._ Why did you bring it up?”

 

 

Kraglin hardens his negligible jaw. “Stupid. Didn't think.”

“Damn right you didn't.” Another peep at the wound. Yeah, he can almost peel off the gauze pad completely. It bears a messy rosette of red Hraxian blood. “He doesn't like too much pain. The dirty talking's good, but the spanks were pushing it, and...”

“Don't need you... To tell me how t'fuck my cap'n.”

“I'm sure you don't,” says Stakar charitably. He ignores the needle jabbing at his brain, the one that agrees.

“Been fuckin' him since I hit twenty-one.”

 

 

Jab, jab, jab. “I'm glad for you.”

Kraglin swells up, much as a rake-thin low-Gravver can without popping. “Longer than you were.”

 

 

Jab.

 

 

“It's not a competition.”

“Then why's yer mug so pissy?”

“I'm not pissy,” Stakar tries to explain. “I'm tired. This is supposed to be my downshift.”

“Well.” Kraglin flaps a limp white hand at his gut wound. “I ain't offerin' you the bed.”

 

 

He probably didn't intend for that to be funny, but it is, just a bit. Stakar's chuckle crackles out of his chest. For a moment they both sit there, bewildered. That almost feels _nice._

Stakar has to ruin it. “The hell happened to safe words?”

Kraglin's shrug is more of a twitch. “Don't need 'em.”

“Your arrow-induced hernia disproves your point.”

“You don't tell me what to do. You ain't... You ain't my cap'n.”

“No,” Stakar agrees. “No I'm not. I'm your admiral.” Then, before Kraglin's scowl can progress from his mouth to his brows: “I'm also Yondu's friend.”

 

 

Kraglin's scoff is all throat. “ _Friend._ ”

Now isn't the time to argue over nomenclature. “I care about him. Like you do.”

“Bull... _shit._ I known him... thirty years. More.” Kraglin weakly thumped his chest, narrowly avoiding dragging his arm over the gauze and undoing their progress. “Ain't never... betrayed him.”

 

 

Stakar can't help it. He should be stronger than this, maturer. But somehow, Obfonteri always brings out the worst in him.

“Really?" he asks. "Because I remember hearing some things about a mutiny that would suggest otherwise.”

Kraglin's eyes widen until they bulge from their sockets. Then, just as slowly, they narrow again. “Weren't the same.”

 

 

It wasn't. Stakar knows it. And yet, he keeps talking anyway.

 

 

“You spoke out against him in front of his men. You turned their allegiance against him.”

“And you,” croaked Kraglin, “made him love you. Then you cut him loose. Like he was worthless. Like he was _nothing._ ”

 

 

The blood soaks through the gauze at a soporific pace, tickling Stakar's palm. “It's up to Yondu,” he says eventually, “to choose what and when he forgives.”

Obfonteri shakes his head. “Idiot forgave us ages back. S'why I... s'why I gotta hate you. Cause he won't. Cause he can't. Cause next time it happens, I gotta be... I gotta be _ready._ ”

 

 

He's rambling. Not long before Stakar loses him to dreamland. Time to steer this conversation back on course.

 

 

“Just tell me one thing, Obfonteri.” He presses the pad down, no harder than is necessary to keep compression. Wouldn't matter anyway – they're making the most of their newly repleted medbay stock, and right now, Kraglin can't feel a thing.

His eyelashes flutter, thin and scraggly as the rest of him, then droop. He grasps Stakar's wrist, loose and sweaty.

“Wha'?”

Stakar looks down at him from on high. “Tell me you didn't do it just because you wanted to hurt him.”

 

 

Confusion spools across Kraglin's face, slow as treacle. Then anger.

 

 

“Fuck you,” he tells Stakar, hand shaking almost as much as the perforated muscle in his abdomen. “Fuck you, fuck everything you fucking did, fuck you walking away...”

“You're doped to the gills, boy. You don't know what you're saying.”

“Fuck you for coming back again!”

 

 

Stakar tries to retreat, but finds his wrist caught in a feverish death grip. He's above holding grudges based on what a man says while on high-grade painkillers – but for Obfonteri, he might make an exception. “Careful.”

Obfonteri doesn't hear him. “The hell couldn't you stay out of it? Did enough damage, you did, first time around. The hell couldn't you just _stay away and leave us alone._..”

 

 

The man is clearly hysterical. There's only one thing left to do. Stakar retrieves the syringe from the bedside table and administers the rest of the anesthetic. Obfonteri's fury fades, and his energy with it.

 

 

“Fuck you,” he slurs for a final time. Then – at long last – he's silent.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'M SORRY**


	9. treads on the ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I'm sorry! (Happy Christmas)**

He finds Yondu in the laundry room, watching Kraglin's grubby leathers as they bob about beyond the airlock. When you make your living floating about through a hostile environment in tin cans of varying size, you learn to make the most of what you've been given – in this case, a rapid freeze-washing resource. The leathers are soaked in deep-scouring solvent solution then dangled out the back of the ship in a net, allowing them to frost. Drag 'em back in, work out your frustration on them for a while, shake the dirty ice into the drain for recycling, and there you have it: one fresh uniform.

It's been so long since Yondu's coat got an icebath Stakar is frankly amazed he remembers how.

 

 

“Hey,” he says. “You ready to head to Bridge?”

“No,” Yondu says. At least he's being honest.

Stakar squeezes his shoulder. “You have to be.”

 

 

He's not sure how to put it into words, just how important this is. Yondu's strong facade might be the only column on which his future stands. Stakar can offer as much guidance as he likes, but at the end of the day, if that pillar crumbles, down Yondu goes.

But even as he thinks that thought, he knows that's not how this ends. He's just got Yondu back. He won't let him down again.

 

 

“Where's Kraglin?”

Stakar considers his words carefully. “Sleeping.”

The shoulder under his hand is tenser than a wound spring. “He okay?”

“Right as Rigel tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

 

 

That shoulder's also shaking, just a little. Kraglin had been trembling from misfiring nerves and muscle damage. Yondu? Yondu doesn't have that excuse.

 

 

Five minutes left on the clock. Stakar sighs. He pulls Yondu in, tucking his head against his neck so the new implant bonks lightly off his ear. Yondu lets him, for a while. Then he pulls away.

“What do we tell the crew?”

 

 

Four minutes to go. Usually, Stakar would suggest claiming that Kraglin had backtalked, disobeyed – neither of which were technically untrue – and had reaped the punishment. That had the double effect of keeping the crew in the dark and giving them a glimpse of Yondu's more disciplinarian side.

But this isn't a usual situation by any means. He can't jeopardize this crew's faith in their captain and XO's working relationship. Not so soon after a mutiny.

 

 

And Yondu's still shaking.

 

 

“Go back to your cabin,” he says. “I'll handle the crew.”

Aftercare with Yondu is a tricky business. Like a cat, he only likes to be stroked a certain number of times, and he expects you to instinctively know this rather than asking. Your penalty for failing to do so? Scratched arms. Or, in Yondu's case, scowls and grumbles about sentiment.

But right now, there isn't any time to reach that stage. Stakar will handle the cuddling when he returns.

Yondu glances up at him, dull-eyed. “Kraglin's sleepin', you said.”

With the aid of medical-grade tranquilizers. “I think you'll be fine.”

“What 'bout the laundry?”

“I'll handle that too.” That's why he's here, he realizes. Not just to be an endorsing smile, promising the support of the central fleet. He's here to take on all the burdens that the captain and first mate can't, or won't, for whatever reason. To get them back on their feet.

 

 

Stakar needs to stop expecting Yondu to bounce back to his old persona. He needs to stop acting as if the years haven't left their toll – because they have, not so much in the lines on Yondu's face or the sag of his muscle, but in the hollow well beneath, which will take more than Stakar's forgiveness to fill.

 

 

“Hey,” he says, squeezing those slumping shoulders. “I got this.”

“Yeah.” Yondu sounds more tired than ever. Where's that bravado from the captain's table? That grin? The insult he tossed at Aleta, like that wasn't more dangerous than throwing a knife? “I don't.”

 

 

Stakar frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I don't got this.”

“What?”

“This.”

 

 

Stakar frowns harder. The man's making less sense than Kraglin. Yondu exhales in a noisy gust.

“I don't think,” he says in an awful, measured tone, one which means he's been mulling this over for quite some time, “I'm ready to be cap'n again.”

 

 

No.

 

 

“I don't think,” Yondu continues, peeking at Stakar to gauge his reaction, “I wanna be.”

 

 

_No._

 

 

“You could've told me before we took fifty miners off Knowhere.”

That's not really a problem, or at the very least, it's one that can be delegated to a pen-pusher as soon as they're back in formation. Stakar's mind shuffles the logistics on automatic – the new recruits can be frittered away into the different crews. One of the undercaptains reported losing half a schooner's worth to a fuel mix-up; she could use the extra manpower. But that doesn't make this a decision to be made lightly.

Stakar leans forwards. “You do this,” he says quietly. “You give it all up, and there's no guarantee you can claim it again later.” This will only prove the undercaptains right.

 

 

Yondu was supposed to be on the Bridge a minute ago. Now he's nodding at Stakar, more certain than he's looked about anything since he yelled at him in his office for daring to trash-talk his mate.

“I know.” For a guy who's been subdropping, he looks freakishly focused.

Stakar shakes his head. “What're you going to do?”

“Workin' with my boy was damn near the only thing that kept me alive these past years. Might give him a call.”

 

 

That's... more honest than Stakar was expecting. Uncomfortably so.

 

 

“He chose to leave,” he says – not to hurt Yondu, just stating a fact. “You can't run after him.”

“I'll tell him I ain't lookin' to call no shots.” Sounds like Yondu's been planning this in his head for some time. He looks up at Stakar with a desperate sort of determination, like he needs him to confirm this isn't all about to go up in smoke. “Just tell him real honest. I'mma fly solo with Krags, run some merc work. If he ever needs an assist, I'm there.”

 

 

It sounds... simple. Far away from the machinations and skulking politics of the Ravager clans, the whispers of _codebreaker._ It won't be big and it won't be glamorous – although with his arrow and his rep and his first officer beside him, Yondu will at least be able to command respect, take what jobs he wants, only have to worry about feeding himself rather than a hungry crew.

That's the worst thing. It's _plausible._ Yondu could break ties with Stakar and make it on his own, of his own accord, and it might actually work.

 

 

Stakar can't remember the last time he was so afraid.

 

 

“You don't have to do this,” he tries. “You're settling into this. It's taking a while, but...”

“No, I ain't.” Yondu’s smiling, just a little, as if saying all this has eased one of the weights from his chest. “Sat on a ship covered in crap from dead bodies for almost a month. Got too much shit in my head. Gotta process it, if I wanna get anywhere. Gotta... gotta be there for my kid, my mate.” Something tells Stakar he doesn't just mean that in the XO-sense of the word. “That's what matters. Not this.”

 

 

 _What about me? Do I matter too?_ Stakar refuses to sound like a teen whining for affection over holo-text.

 

 

“I cleaned up that crap,” he says, because he can't think of much else. Yondu nods. He squeezes Stakar's shoulder too, opposite side, forming a circle of arms.

“Ain't that easy, Stakar. Can’t just squirt solvents on an’ wipe it all away.”

 

 

Doesn't Stakar know it.

 

 

“Alright,” he says. He releases Yondu, breaking the circle.

“Alright?” Yondu echoes. It doesn't sound like he quite believes it.

 

 

 _Hell no,_ thinks Stakar on the inside. He's only just started repairing things. He's not letting go. Not yet. Not ever, not again.

 

 

“Alright. I can swap you the _Quadrant_ for an M-ship and the remainder in cash. That'll get you started.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it would.” Yondu glances at him from the corner of his eye. “You okay with this?”

 

 

Not in the slightest.

 

 

“You'll stay in contact, right?”

“Course.” Yondu looks more relieved by the second. Younger, brighter. Cares and fears falling away. Like he thinks this means _hope._

 

 

Stakar, in contrast, is sinking. Like when the Collector's girl gave her spiel. Like when the first reports about little Millai landed on his desk.

A stupid part of him wants to shout 'I'll come with you!' He could leave it all behind. Start anew. His duties to the Ravager counsel weigh on him like chains.

But, also like chains, they aren't so easy to slip. Stakar has responsibilities, and as much as the juvenile part inside him shrieks to go off gallivanting around the system, fucking Yondu and tolerating Kraglin and gradually discovering where that strange _fascination_ with the gaunt Hraxian leads, he can't.

He _knows_ he can't. He knows he'd regret it, first day he woke up and heard about his fleet roaring off on their next mission, headed by Aleta or whoever else wanted the Admiral's crown. Ravagers don't retire. Stakar built this fleet from its grassy roots, and the thought of being without it is like amputating his own hand.

 

 

And yet. _And yet._

He wants. So badly, he _wants._

 

 

“Go check on Obfonteri,” he says, dry-mouthed. “I'll see to the crew.”

He fobs them off with some excuse about Yondu being engaged in an overrunning client's meet. He oversees the setting of the nav-equipment himself.

He needs to do something. He can feel this sliding between his fingers, like trying to hold fine grain in the cup of your hand. It all runs out eventually, no matter how tight your grip. Tiredness gnaws behind his browbone, and for a moment, it's very tempting to just let it fall. Let Yondu drift away, let those thirty years of distance grow.

 

 

Yondu _wants_ this. Is Stakar cruel enough, selfish enough, to stop him trying?

He doesn't know. He's afraid of the answer.

 

 

“Sir?” The Kronan waves, careful not to crush any of the delicate switches that poke from the overhead navigation dash. “Sir, I think our tanks our full.”

“Close the caps then. Start the uncoupling procedure.”

 

 

What's he supposed to do? What _can_ he do? At the very least, he can make sure any bad blood is flushed out of their system. The conclusion to the Collector conversation got lost in all their drama. Tomorrow, he decides, slouching low on Yondu's chair. Tomorrow, they hash it all out.

It's like running decontami-protocol on an infected ship. You vent all the suspect gas and install new oxygenerators; clear the air so you can start afresh. Stakar needs to show Yondu that he's changed too, that he's willing to listen to his side of the story. He needs to prove to Kraglin that he's not a threat, that he’s not a danger, that he’s not going to hurt his captain.

He’ll talk to him about this stupid rivalry – properly, this time. No anesthetics. They can get it all out in the open, and maybe – just maybe – see a way forwards.

Here, as part of the clans. Not freewheeling solo. Not chasing dreams and runaway sons.

 

 

It sounds easy in theory. But the cosmos has this knack for testing Stakar’s resolve.

 

 

“Sir?” The squishy chick on the comms wobbles nervously. “Peter Quill has just hailed our galleon.”

Of course. How convenient. Stakar knuckles at his eyebrows. “Did he mention what he wants?”

“He was asking for the captain.” Bioluminescene shone in her cheeks – the equivalent of a blush. “He’s very handsome.”

 

 

Looking for the captain? Well, he can’t have him. Right now, the captain is tucked in beside his XO, simmering off all those chemicals running rampant in his brain. It would be cruel to disturb him. More than that, it'd be cruel to give him false hope.

Peter chose to leave. Not once, but twice. That’s pretty fucking definitive. Stakar meant what he said when he told Yondu that he might come back, but it needs to be on the boy’s own terms. What’s the point of giving him space, letting him be his own man, if you’re going to chase after him again? Butt into his life, put your stamp on everything, make him revolve around you like you’re the centre of his orbit?

 

 

 _Like you aren’t doing the same thing,_ whispers something spiteful at the back of Stakar’s mind. It isn’t really a voice and it doesn’t have any actual noise to it, but it sounds like Aleta all the same. _This ain’t your place. This ain’t your call, old man. You might be Admiral; your word might be Code – stronger than law to those of our kind. But you sure as hell don’t get to make this decision for them._

It makes a persuasive point. If Stakar didn’t know just how much Yondu has pinned on his son, he would listen.

 

 

Fact of the matter is, Yondu is gearing up for disappointment and Stakar isn’t sure how much more of it the old fool can take. He can’t protect the man from himself, but at the very least, he can stop him from following this path, tagging along after his son and begging to be included like the ugly kid on the playground. Yondu deserves better.

 

 

“I have captain's overrides,” he says. “Ping it to my pad. I'll take this one privately.”

The Kronan looks uneasy. “But the uncoupling protocols...”

“Don't worry; you've got this. I won't be long.”

 

 

And he isn't. All he has to do is walk out the room, delete the message, wipe the log, and walk back.

 

 

So why does he falter, as his hand hovers above the Bridge door biolock? On the other side of it, Yondu’s new recruits are bumbling through their duties, trying to recall the sequences for casting off. They need his help, his guidance, just as much as their captain.

The empty log light blinks from his datapad. Stakar stares at it a long moment. It seems to stare back.

 

 

To Peter Quill, it'll look like the captain trashed his request as soon as it landed in his inbox. To Yondu, it'll look like it was never there.

 _Is he selfish enough to stop Yondu leaving?_ Seems like Stakar has his answer.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It takes Stakar an hour to regret his decision. By then, it's too late to change it.

If he calls Peter back, he'll have to explain that he deleted the message. The kid might be dopey, but that girl of his is sharper than the pig-stickers Obfonteri stashes up his sleeves. She won't buy excuses or his claims of thumbs accidentally clipping buttons.

 

 

Anyway, Quill will want to know why Yondu's not manning his own inbox. That will lead to tales of subdrop and arrows through small intestines and, quite frankly, far more about his pseudo-father's sex life than any son, adoptive or otherwise, wants to know.

 _Easy, isn't it,_ mutters that dark Aleta-like voice. It sounds even more scathing than usual. _To act like you don't got no choice. Like something else is guiding your hand. Like you have to exile him, like you have to stifle his trade and starve him out like you’re laying siege…_

 

 

“Shut up,” says Stakar out loud.

 

 

The conversation among the Bridge crew trickles to a nervous stop. Dammit. He wasn't talking to them – but he can’t very well say that, so he firms his jaw and pushes up, stalking from one console to the next with his hands clasped behind his back, scowling over their shoulders.

“You have to learn to do this without all the chatter. Focus on your own station, not what the person next to you is doing.”

The Kronan’s largest, which also makes him the biggest target. He wilts satisfyingly under Stakar’s glare. “Sorry, sir.”

“You weren’t even talking to no one, Joko. Nobody likes you.” That’s the jelly-girl – she’s got balls alright. Possibly literally. Stakar doesn’t know the ins-and-outs of her particular outworlder species, and neither does he care to investigate. “Respectfully, sir, this is our first time. We’re just trying to talk so we don’t put no holes in yer ship.”

 

 

She’s right. But this isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong. Stakar’s dug himself this far; backing down now makes him look weak, and that isn’t an acceptable outcome; not this early in the crew's tenure. Shake their assurance in the brass this soon, and you'll never earn it back again.

He narrows his eyes at the girl until nervous bubbles swell and pop under the surface of her skin. Then he glares a bit more for good measure.

 

 

“I may not be here in my official capacity as an Admiral,” he says, soft and menacing. “But it would do you well not to forget who I am.”

The jelly girl squishes lower on her seat. “But I said ‘respectfully…’”

“God, Miorx,” says another fellow from the bar. Stakar recognizes him as the goober who almost got his balls scorched off. Seems he’s more sensible sober. “Shut _up._ ”

Miorx does so. She peeps at Stakar – or, more specifically, his solar wings, which fizzle softly in the Bridge’s ruddy twilight.

 

 

Stakar dispels the charge. He isn’t in the mood for tyranny, not today.

 

 

“Just tone down the chat,” he says gruffly, sinking back on the seat. He's tired. It itches behind his eyes, weighs leaden in his bones. This is supposed to be his sleep shift, after all, and the last time he had to pull an all-nighter he was sixty-something.

He wants to go find Yondu. He wants to tell him he's sorry. He wants to tell him that it's for the best to give up on his aspirations to be with his son.

Hell, he wants to listen to anyone but that infuriating Aleta-voice (and stars above; what sort of man assigns the voice of his conscience to _Aleta freaking Ogord?_ Perhaps Yondu isn't the only one in need of therapy.)

 

 

But he can't. He has to stay out here and babysit and do his duty by his crew, guilt and assurance and memories all clamoring for attention on the inside of his head.

Yondu used to trust him. Absolutely, damn near unequivocally. If Stakar told him to jump off a cliff Yondu'd take a running leap, assured that there'd be a lake at the bottom. Now? Now he acts like Stakar is a whip lash waiting to fall on him, a punishment waiting to happen.

 

 

By deleting Peter's holocall, Stakar's proving Yondu right.

 

 

Stakar slouches in the chair. Sleep beckons, but he can't start snoring. He needs something to get him through this shift, so he casts his mind back to happier times, to the way it used to be.

Aleta didn't swing by often, not even in the glory days – always the lone wolf, the independent, never needing Stakar as much as he needed her. But when she did drop by, it was always shattering in its intensity.

Usually the two of them blazed in constant competition, egging each other on, twisting like locked wrestlers to see which of them would take charge. They were constantly flipping, pinning, shifting the dynamic, worming out from under one another and trying to land on top. Their solar arcs would smack and spark, shorting half the ship when they clashed.

Throw a third into the mix though? Then they had someone to focus on, someone to gang up on until they were _screaming_ for it, pleading, begging them to cum.

 

 

They always work so much better united rather than divided. It was Yondu who made them remember that.

 

 

Stakar wonders whether she'll come to visit if this all blows up in his face. He wonders if he'll want her to. The mutter in his head is cutting enough; he doesn't need her reading off an itemized list of all the ways he fucked up.

No, that's ridiculous. Aleta's never itemized anything in her life. Stakar hides a small smirk behind his palm.

 

 

A clang reverberates through their hull plates.

“We've disengaged,” says the girl manning the clamps as if she can hardly believe it. Grins flash around the bridge, although after Stakar's earlier outburst, no one dares to whoop. Stakar lets them see his own.

“Good job,” he says, striving for something a little warmer. “Check fuel levels. Make sure there's no leaks. Are we solid?”

“Solid, sir,” agrees the almost-nutless fellow. Stakar nods.

“Alright. Now – Joko, is it?”

The Kronan stammers out a 'yessir'. How someone so big can exude so much meekness is a mystery. “Let's run through plotting courses. All of you, gather around and watch. We'll rotate stations on the way back, try to get a feel for where you're most confident. Sound good?”

 

 

There's still an edge of tension in the air, but it's blunter than when Stakar first snapped at them and the 'yessirs' sound marginally more enthusiastic. Stakar casts thoughts of empty inboxes and disappointed Terrans from his mind.

He considers standing again. His aching knees decide against it. No matter - he can dictate to Joko from here.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

He knocks on their cabin door. “Shift relief,” he says.

No response.

 

 

What were Kraglin and Yondu thinking? They weren't going to make him work four shifts in a row. Surely not. He would've done it, in his younger days – had done, during crises; subsiding on caff and catnaps for weeks at a time. But back then, he bounced back. Nowadays if he breaks a bone it stays broken, and if he skips sleep he has to suffer the dawdle of his overstretched brain for the next several cycles.

Stakar shakes his head. He raps again, and this time the door buzzes open.

 

 

Yondu's there. He's alone.

 

 

Stakar frowns at the empty bed behind him, messy and rumpled. The mattress is dented around the shapes of two bodies, one blunt and short, the other thin as a longsword.

The syringe rests on the bedside table. There's an empty bottle beside it, one that smells pungent even by Obfonteri's standards.

 

 

Stakar tiredly rubs his stubble. He wonders if a nightcap would help him sleep.

“Where's your XO?” he asks.

Bathroom? Checking the engines? Tinkering with that ugly old M-ship from the scrapyard?

 

 

Yondu doesn't reply, not right away. He staggers back to the bed. He looks awful, far worse than Stakar feels, worse than their last conversation under the stars on the observation deck, when Yondu told Stakar he meant to leave this all behind him.

He sits down heavy enough to make the mattress creak. It releases a stale waft – sex and sweat and whatever Yondu's been drinking.

 

 

“Gone,” he says.

 

 

“Gone?” What does _gone_ mean? Stakar follows him, snagging the bottle. It's empty, to his disappointment, but one sniff makes his eyebrows shoot up, fumes rebounding off the back of his throat.

Another bottle lies in fragments, smashed over the bedframe. Looks like that still had some left in it when it met its sticky end. The booze seeps through the mattress. Every now and then, a droplet plinks to the floor.

 

 

Yondu's sitting perilously close to some of the shards. He doesn't seem to notice. Stakar points them out.

“Hey, c'mon. Get up off there.”

Yondu does so, on leaden legs. Something sinks in Stakar's gut, but he can't name it. Worry, most likely. If Yondu chugged all that liquor himself, he's knocked at least a year off his lifespan.

 

 

“What's going on? Were you trying to pickle your liver?”

Nothing. Yondu just stands there, swaying from side to side, and relaxes his eyes until his focus hovers a few inches in front of his nose.

Stakar sighs. “Look, you're on shift. Showing up drunk? That sort of thing, it doesn't look good.”

“I don't fuckin' care 'bout what _looks good._ ”

 

 

Great. Just what he needs. When Yondu drinks his way past the lascivious stage and into the stubborn, there's no way to undo it other than with sleep, possibly a morning alarm in the form of a cold bucket, water optional.

Stakar puts his hands on his hips. “Call your damn XO,” he says. “Tell him he’s covering your shift while you sleep it off.”

 

 

Yondu _laughs._

 

 

“What?”

“Hell d’you mean, _what?_ ” Yondu staggers at him. It's half a lunge, half him losing his balance. When Stakar catches him, Yondu wrenches away so hard he smacks into the wall. Stakar half-expects him to ricochet off and land face-first on the broken bottle, but Yondu manages to steady himself. He slides down slowly, head drooping forwards until it meets his bent knees. “ _Hell._ ”

 

 

 _Now you’ve done it,_ singsongs Aleta’s little voice in Stakar’s head. He ignores it, lowering into a creaky squat opposite.

 

 

“Yondu?” he says quietly. “Yondu, are you alright?”

Yondu laughs again, a harsh and humorless sound. “S’what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

Yondu raises his head. He looks at Stakar dead on, the bags under his eyes deeper than oil wells. “He’s _gone,_ Stakar.”

 

 

Something about the emphasis on that word makes things click together. If Stakar sauntered out that door and headed down the corridor to the M-ship hangar, what would he find? That old rustbucket mouldering in its sling? Or just another empty maintenance harness, the engineering panels scorched from the burn of Kraglin’s blast-off?

“Stars,” he breathes. Yondu laughs again, although it's more of a sucking gasp, that awful sound men make before they cry.

“S'what you _wanted.”_

“No. _No._ I was coming to talk to him. To try and put things right between us. It's…”

 

 

_It’s not my fault._

 

 

Except it is. It _is._ Stakar’s been running from that responsibility long enough. How can he expect Yondu to start taking control of his actions when he’s been such a shitty role model?

Kraglin's words swim back to him. _Y_ _ou just shake your head and say ‘what a damn pity’. Cause it ain’t your fault, is it? You ain’t never to blame._

 

 

Stakar shakes his head. He doesn't say 'what a damn pity'. He goes for “What happened?” instead.

 

 

“He woke up.” Yondu speaks flatly, simple words, pared of all inflection. Like he’s directing them at a mirror, not Stakar. Like he’s narrating the scene he’s been turning over and over in his head. “Started gettin’ real shirky. Sayin’ you drugged him an’ all.”

Stakar frowns. “He was injured. In pain. It was for his own good – a general anesthetic, so he wouldn’t cause himself more damage…”

“Said he’d had enough,” Yondu continues. He doesn’t give Stakar time to finish. “Said he were sick of yer shit. ‘What shit?’ I ask. ‘All of it. You an’ him fuckin’ about, makin’ like I’m nothin’.’”

 

 

Stakar has lost track of who’s supposed to be talking. He nods along, striving to look sympathetic. Yondu sneers at where his left hand grips his right wrist, propped on top of his knees, his thumb nail slicing in just shy of his pulsepoint.

“Told him it weren’t like that. Told him we ain’t never been exclusive, so why the hell should we start now? Don’t mean me an’ him ain’t in it for the long-haul, right? Well. He says he’s fine with damn near anyone, just not _you._ ”

 

 

Sounds like Obfonteri. Stakar takes that one on the chin. “Go on.”

 

 

“He starts apologizin’ over the whistlin’ thing, which turns into apologizin’ for the mutiny thing, which turns into him accusin’ me of fuckin’ you because _apparently,_ I hate him for that an’ I’m just tryin’ to make him walk away first an’ all the rest of that flarkin’ high-school drama _bullshit._ ”

The sudden shout would make a lesser man jump. As it is, Stakar’s solar wings flash, which is just as telling. Luckily Yondu’s too far off the deep end to notice.

“So what do you do?”

“I tell him it’s bullshit!”

“Of course.”

“He says bullshit or not, he’s through. He says he’s goin’. With or without me, he says.”

 

 

Stakar shuts his eyes. He steeples his fingers and rests the tips on the bridge of his nose. “You chose without.”

 

 

Yondu swings a fist at him. He’s too far away and aiming way off the mark anyway. It’s weak and pathetic and all kinds of miserable. Wouldn’t even have winded him if it connected.

“I thought he were fuckin’ fakin’ it, okay? Called his fuckin’ bluff. Like we was hagglin’ over somethin’ at market, not… not… _fuck._ ”

He folds forwards again, burying his face in his knees. Stakar feels wretched just looking at him. But he knows that’s just a pale shade of what Yondu’s feeling right now.

 

 

 _Kraglin was right,_ whispers Aleta’s voice in his head. _You_ are _that guy._

Stakar, for once, can’t muster a counterargument. Kraglin was right. _Kraglin was right._ He’s been that guy all along. Ever since Yondu came back, at least – _no, no, don’t shift blame onto him. Can’t you see? You’re doing it again._

 

 

“I’m sorry,” he tries. He says that quite a lot – whenever it suits him, in fact. Rarely does he mean it. Rarely does he not follow it up with a carefully-worded justification. He uses that ‘sorry’ as an emollient, softening up his target to make them more receptive to his interpretation of events.

“Shaddup. Weren’t only you he was mad at.” Yondu glances up, his blurry, wobbly vision settling above Stakar’s left eyebrow. It remains there for all of two seconds before he dives back to the comfort of his patellae. “Knew we shouldna done it,” he mumbles. “Not even once, not that first fuckin’ time. Just… Everythin’ seemed so fuckin’ _dark,_ an’ y’know I suck at talkin’ shit through. Wanted to make it all up to ya, and that just felt so much easier than _wordin’,_ y’know?”

 

 

Stakar wonders if he should feel offended. “You were fucking me to get back in my good books?”

 

 

“No. _No._ See? Words. They an’ me, they don’t…” Yondu belches morosely. “ _Mix._ Just. Connectin’. It felt like things were okay again. Jus’ for a bit. Guess I got too caught up chasin’ that _okay_ rather’n tryin’ to actually _make shit better_.”

It would be very, very easy to agree. To let Yondu think he was the catalyst. Stakar considers it for all of five seconds. Then he grits his teeth and does the right thing.

 

 

“Yeah, you're not exactly partner of the year. But I should've called it off.” Should've talked to Kraglin from the beginning. Approached him first, on equal standing. Let him work through all that rage rather than pulling rank. Should've acknowledged his mistakes and promised to do better. Maybe that way they'd have had a chance.

Yondu sniffs again, a wet and wretched sound. “Well,” he says shakily. “He's gone. He ain't comin' back. Just like Peter.”

Stakar only realizes how hard he's squeezing his fists when his knuckles crack. The datadex in his pocket suddenly weighs as much as a neutron star, dragging him down, crushing him in its gravity well.

 

 

He's fucked this up. He's fucked this up _royally_ , in more ways than one. He's ruined this man's chance at happiness, this man he cares about almost as much as himself.

 

 

Yondu blinks. His eyelids rise slow as if they're peeling off glue. “I think I hate you,” he slurs. “I _want_ to hate you. Jus' don't fuckin' know _how._ ”

Stakar swallows thickly. He deserves that. He deserves _this;_ the bubbling resentment in Yondu's stare. His solar wings dim until the overheads, set low in preparation for Yondu's hangover, are the only light source.

“I'm sorry,” he says again.

 

 

Yondu slumps forwards. For a moment Stakar thinks he's collapsed, put himself in a booze-coma to rival the one he languished in after they fished him out the vacuum. But then Yondu shuffles up onto his elbows. He pulls himself forwards, worm-slow, one arm after another, until his cheek rests on Stakar's thigh.

Warm. He's _warm._ Warm and breathing in soggy, shaky pants, and entirely too close to Stakar's dick.

 

 

Stakar runs cautious fingers over the scars on his scalp. “Yondu, what’s...”

“I don't know how to hate you,” Yondu whispers. He speaks soft as cherry-smoke, words curling hot against Stakar's inseam. Shaky hands settle on his hips. Yondu eases in so naturally, nuzzling him with a bristly cheek. Stakar shuts his eyes, bites his lip. His heart thumps double-time, the pulse thrumming through him, settling low in his belly.

“I just. I just need. _Please._ I need...”

 

 

Yondu doesn't beg. Not outside of a scene, not unless you get him whimpering and squirming and _whining_ for it. This? This is as far from that as it gets.

 

 

Stakar lets him mouth his cock for five whole seconds. Then, grudgingly, he eases him away.

“No.”

Drool coats Yondu's chin in a spiderweb of silver. His shoulders slump like landslides. “I could ride ya, I could...”

"I said no."

 

 

For all his talk about not knowing how to hate Stakar, the fury that rushes over Yondu's face is unmistakable. Stakar has a blue wrist caught in each hand; when Yondu pulls he lets him go and receives a fist in the jaw for his troubles.

Luckily, it contains no more umph behind it than Yondu's earlier flailing. Stakar sighs, reclaiming the wrists when Yondu tries to hit him again, and pushing them back into Yondu's lap.

 

 

It would be so easy to twist this. Call him out for attacking Stakar after Stakar says no to sex. It looks wrong, it sounds wrong – hell, it is wrong – but Stakar knows where Yondu's coming from. He's chasing sensation, pleasure, the weight of a cock in his throat that will numb him to the world around him. All Stakar has to do is say yes.

Stakar holds the datadex, considering his next words. Then he passes it to Yondu, interface-end first. “Take this.”

Yondu doesn't. His fists stay clenched, quaking as muscle tremors run up and down his overtensed arms. “Whassat?”

Stakar takes it upon himself to explain: “Peter called, earlier. Didn't actually read the message. Thought I'd copied it over to another pad, deleted it before checking.”

 

 

One day he might tell Yondu the truth. That he panicked, that he took things further than they should ever have gone, that for a minute back there, he actively tried to cut him off from his family. That he was exactly the sort of monster Kraglin saw twisting and coiling under his skin.

Not right now though. Right now, they had to focus on getting Yondu away from that monster. Somewhere safe.

 

 

“He called,” Stakar repeated, hating the shake in his voice. “Call him back. Tell him I deleted the message, tell him you wanna know what he had to say.”

Yondu squints at the empty call registry as if it's an optical illusion. “He called. Me?”

“Yeah.” Stakar forces a smile. “Reckon he misses his dad.”

Yondu wipes the spit off his chin, moving like a man twice his age. He still shakes, as he brushes the pad with the sort of reverence Stakar associates with temple-goers, but less than before, all that impotent fury lanced and drained. “I... I gotta... Quill.”

 

 

Stakar wants to touch him. Wants to pull him onto his lap and cling to him, like a buoy in a stormy sea.

He sits on his hands.

 

 

“Maybe wait until you've sobered up?”

Yondu opens his mouth like he's gonna argue. A belch comes out instead of words. He scrunches his nose at the boozy taste, then claps a hand over his mouth when a little too much tries to come up.

Stakar's smile becomes a little more genuine. “Think that's a yes.”

 

 

Yondu doesn't heave himself towards the bed. He just crawls back against the wall, his hunched posture now protective as he wraps himself around the pad in a brittle blue shell. “ _No._ Gotta. Gotta do it now.”

“You're slurring.”

“He's used to it. Look. S'just. Can't say shit I mean if I ain't got somethin' in me.” Stakar neglects the innuendo. Yondu, oblivious, carries on. “Gotta tell him I love him, Stakar.”

 

 

Stakar's not sure a drunken call in what will be the middle of Peter's night cycle is the best way to go about that. But, as has been summarily proven, he doesn't know their little family, and the more he interferes, the more fragile he makes those threads that binds them together. Right now he's old and he's tired, and if there were any booze left he'd like to follow Yondu down into his stupor. But he's not volunteering to suck the spillage out Yondu and Kraglin's dirty mattress, and so he takes his leave.

Practicalities. He's gotta think of the practicalities.

 

 

“I need sleep,” he says. “At least a few hours. I'll set an alarm. You wait to sober up.” He performs a quick spot check – quick as his sluggish, itchy eyes can manage – and assures himself there are no more bottles within easy-grabbing reach. “Take a wash, then head to Bridge. Don't go blurting any of this to anyone. Got it?”

Yondu scowls. “If you had yer way I'd wash every damn day.”

“Yes,” said Stakar, heaving himself to stand. “You would.”

 

 

He leaves him there, curled up in the corner of the room he and Kraglin shared, cradling the datapad with booze-clumsy hands. Not because he wants to. Not because he needs to. Because Yondu made his choice and Stakar has to honor it.

No more isolating him with excuses about _protection_ and _it's for your own good._ No more pretending that everything is fine, that Yondu just needs more time.

 

 

They’re done. For both of their sakes. Stakar, for once in his life, did the right thing.

 _What,_ snarls that little voice he's assigned to Aleta. _You want a cookie?_

 

 

No. In all honesty, Stakar just wants to sleep.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The orloni tables were silent. The skrank snored in its cage, its spines bristling and dropping with each wheezy breath. The Ravager hung off the bar, his jumpsuit soggy with a concoction of booze and stomach acid. Even his mohawk drooped.

Nikki sighed, freeing his empty glass from lax white fingers. Half of its contents had poured down the side of the counter, for which Kraglin's liver must be grateful. He hung on for a fitful moment, but his blood content contained more beer than haemoglobin and his grip was weak as a baby's.

It was tempting to summon a flame, waft it under his nostrils, scorch a few of the hairs until he perked out of his doze. But she only switched him from hard spirits onto watery piss-grog five minutes back. The vapor cloud hung around him so thickly that any fire risked immolating the poor guy.

“C'mon,” she told him. “You stay here much longer, Tivvan's gonna pour you into miner yellows.”

Kraglin burbled something unintelligible, a little bubble blowing out his nose. He wasn't asleep though – just facedown on a sticky counter top, one hand cupping his belly like he was afraid his innards would fall out without that pressure. The other curled around the shape of the absent glass.

Nikki shook her head. “I ain't got no rooms. I can let ya sleep here, but only the one night. An' if you just start drinking again in the morning, you're on your tod.”

Kraglin burbled again.

“You probably don't understand what I'm saying.”

Burble.

“Are you even alive? Or are those just death rattles?”

Kraglin blinked. Nikki nodded, adding his glass to her scrub pile and circling her washcloth over the bar. She painted sudsy circles around him, leaving a Kraglin-shaped splodge of grime. Even whistled a jaunty little tune to herself until Kraglin shuddered and whispered _stop_ in a voice so hoarse her own throat ached to hear it.

She cleaned in silence after that.

“Closed,” she said on automatic, when she heard the buzz-tone of the entry alarm. “Learn to read the fuckin' – holy shit, you're Aleta Ogord.”

“In the flesh,” drawled the petite pirate who'd just sauntered through the doors, flanked by her green-leathered retinue. The women exchanged mutters, elbowing each other, pointing to Kraglin. “Got a buzz from a tracker off an out-of-commission ship from the fleet. Came to reclaim our property.” Her ghoulish smile split her face. “Think we found us a thief.”

“Please,” Nikki tried. “No evisceration on the premises...”

“Ain't no thief.”

That made all of them start – Nikki especially. She didn't think Kraglin had enough fine motor control for speech.

“Hey, you can talk? Jackass – were you ignoring me?”

Kraglin continued to do so. “No thief,” he insisted, turning his bleary scowl on Aleta. “Found ship... junkyard. Fuck your husband.”

Aleta raised an eyebrow. “Does one follow on from the other?”

“What? I don't... I dunno. But _fuck him._ ”

“Pass. That doesn't usually end well.” Aleta strode forwards. Her girls hovered in the doorway, held back by her upraised hand. At least she kept them well-trained. “Why do you want to fuck my husband?”

“I _don't._ He's a... a cunt-suckin', moomba-herdin' _bastard._ ”

“He is,” Aleta agreed. She lowered herself onto the barstool beside him, uncaring for the stink of vomit and liquor-soused leather. She gripped Kraglin's elbow when he attempted to liquefy and slither off his seat entirely. “Fetch us a rum then, barkeep.”

“Closed for the night,” Nikki reminded her, but without much hope. When Aleta cocked a brow, she sighed and trudged for the barback, selecting one of the dustier bottles, the ones she only cracked open on special occasions.

At the very least, Ravager captains could fork out the dough.

“He's not having any more,” she told Aleta over her shoulder as she poured. “He's already covered my floor in the contents of his guts. If he drinks himself to death, his shit'll leak out too.”

“Don't worry.” Aleta delivered a companionable pat to Kraglin's shoulder that almost felled him. “I want him able to talk. Now boy. Why don't you tell me what my cunt-sucking, moomba-herding bastard of a husband did now?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not a happy ending... Or is it?**

**Author's Note:**

> **Thank you to everyone who leaves comments/kudos.**


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